The Hunter's Moon

Title: The Hunter's Moon (The Chronicles of Faerie, book 1)

Author: O.R. Melling
Publisher: Amulet Books
Year: 2000

Gwen travels to Ireland to visit her cousin Findabhair, expecting a summer of backpacking, late nights, and the usual road trip adventures. But when Findabhair is kidnapped by the King of Faerie, Gwen must race to save her cousin before the rise of the Hunter's Moon, when the fairies need a human sacrifice.-Summery from Goodreads


I've had this book on my shelf for a couple of years now, I've just never got around to reading it until now. It was a fun read, there are a lot of problems I had with the book, but still it was fun. It took me a while to realize that it was written like a fairy tale(yes, I do realize that I am reading a tale about fairies but I'm talking about Fairy Tales, you know, the Grimm kind). There were tests that Gwen had to pass, random friends along the way who helped, people filled with courage and bravery willing to die for something they loved. Nevertheless the down sides to fairy tales were also apparent such as lack of believability, cookie cutter and underdeveloped characters, boring dialogue, and sudden professions of love.
One of my favorite things in the book was the constant adventure Gwen was on traveling around to a lot of Ireland's best Faerie places. And the best part had to be when the Leprechaun was giving Gwen his tour of Dublin, I couldn't help but laugh at his renaming of the statues, like Tart-with-the-Cart.
The thing that makes people like this book, I think, is that it's steeped in legends and folktales. Miller sure did put her B.A. in Celtic Studies to use, every place Gwen went there seemed to be a story to go along with it, everything in the book seemed connected to Faerie in some way. There were so many legends woven into this one story. Like I said, It was a fun read.