This debut novel seems to be advertised as romantasy, a genre I've only dipped my toes into thus far, but I think that's an unfair tag. It may play well to romantasy fans, being a fantasy novel that has a romance in it, exploring the enemies to lovers trope, but that romance is a long away from being the most important aspect and it's perhaps not unfair to suggest that the book would work almost as well even had it been removed utterly. This plays to me like a fantasy, pure and simple, one that I picked up because it's drenched in Welsh folklore.

Anna Fiteni is a Welsh author and she embraces her heritage here. Every chapter title is in Welsh, with an English translation following it in brackets, and the folkloric creatures are all introduced with their Welsh names, as is entirely appropriate, even if their role within folklore is outlined in English so we're never lost. Sure, readers unfamiliar with the Welsh language will fail dismally at pronouncing these words, believing a word like "ellyllon" to have eight letters not six, but it isn't remotely important. Just trust that most of the novel unfolds in Gwlad y Tylwyth Teg, the Land of the Fair Ones, i.e. Faerie, and let the Welsh words illustrate how exotic that can seem.

We start in the human world, though, in Llanadwen, a small Welsh mining town that's run by the English nobility. Life is hard, not just because it's 1842 but because tolls and taxes are harsh and the Welsh language is banned. Our focal point is the Parry family, which quickly shrinks to three when David Parry receives ten years transportation for setting fire to the tollhouse. That leaves his sixteen year old daughter Sabrina as an unlikely breadwinner, her elder sister Ceridwen being sickly and their grandma Gina old and infirm. The best bet for the family is to marry Ceridwen off as quickly as possible.

And that doesn't happen, because she promptly disappears. Gran says that she'll be in the woods, lost to them, literally gone with the fairies. Sabrina chases away to retrieve her anyway and that takes her and us into Gwlad y Tylwth Teg. We already encountered folklore before we got there, what with Sabrina leaving milk out for the tylwyth teg and Ceridwen hearing a cyhyraeth, a hag that shrieks to warn of death. There are plenty of hags in Welsh folklore, it seems, one promising lead for Sabrina turning out to be a gwrach y rhibin, a hag of the mist, but even more are pwkas, tricksters, and it's pretty clear that none of them are to be trusted.

Fortunately, Sabrina knows this from her family's stories so becomes a strange bundle of careful and impetuous. As she searches for Ceridwen, she runs into all sorts of trouble, often literally, but has both the knowledge and presence of mind not to make such situations instantly worse by, say, giving a fairy her real name. Even when she makes a deal with one, Nerein by name, because she can't see a better option, she does so as Habren, her blonde hair quickly leading him to name her the Habren Faire of the title. Her wicked lies are a sort of superpower, because fairies are unable to lie but she can and that gives her a semblance of power over them.

The thrust of the novel becomes clear relatively quickly, as Sabrina encounters a mermaid called Morgen who's apparently the love of Ceridwen's life. You see, her sister has the sight, so she can see the magic around her all the time, including all these magical creatures. Sabrina doesn't and so can't, unless they want her to, as Morgen does. Anyway, Ceridwen ran away to be with Morgen forever in Gwlad y Tylwth Teg and there are certain obvious limitations to that, not least the fact that Ceridwen is mortal, which leads us to the rest of her plan.

There's a topical need in play, because the Land of the Fair Ones is being slowly devoured by what they call Y Lle Tywyll, the Dark Place. Because of its very nature, merely going there is death to a tylwyth teg, so it's a problem that only humans can solve. Now, nobody's managed it thus far and everyone who tried is dead, but that's prompted King Emrys to offer anything to the human who can take care of business. He's a magical creature, so anything generally means immortality, just the ticket for a young lady who's fallen in love with an effectively immortal creature.

So Ceridwen has taken the King's Road to Llys-y-Ellyllon, the Hollow Court of the Elves, to become the king's champion, tackle the quest at hand and win what she desires. Now, Sabrina has to chase after her to do exactly the same thing, but sooner, hoping that she can win before Ceridwen loses. She's tough, tenacious and wearing an iron ring that she'd stolen from her sister the night before, iron being anathema to the tylwyth teg. And, of course, she gains the sight through her deal with Nerein. However, everything else is against her, except for her ability to lie and fortunately she's savvy enough to use that to her benefit, hence the title.

Of course, that makes this fantasy a quest fantasy, for both Ceridwen and Sabrina, but we follow the latter throughout. We realise that what she learns applies to her sister too, so we can easily imagine what Ceridwen's going through further down the road at every point, including all those where we learn more about how the tylwyth teg are fundamentally tricky little bastards. In many ways, the real story is how Sabrina changes as she navigates this quest, because she's just sixteen, angry and dangerously impetuous, both likable but not at the same time. I had sympathy for her because of the situation she gets herself into but certainly not for the reasons she's there, which are selfish. All these contradictions gradually resolve as she grows.

The backdrop is wonderful but not just because of the Welsh folklore. I thoroughly enjoyed minor characters like Dwp and Peg Irontooth, not to forget Neirin's court and the king's even more vast equivalent, but the wood itself has serious power. Dwp is a llamhigyn y dwg or water leaper, the sort of monster who drags sheep into rivers, devours them whole and leaves their fleeces to float downstream to be found. Peg, who does indeed have iron teeth, is a sort of witch, the only tylwyth teg who can handle iron, so the default armourer for king's champions.

And the wood has its own rules, including how time works, so Sabrina, from 1842, encounters a lost World War I soldier and a girl from 1998 who stayed too long for research purposes and now can't go home without serious ramifications applying. The horrific angles to this aren't played up quite as overtly as in, say, Guy N. Smith's 'The Wood', but they're certainly there, one particular scene especially, and the overall disorientating effect is acutely similar. Frankly, I'd like to have spent a lot longer in the wood exploring, even though I wanted to follow the core story through it.

So far, so good and there isn't much of a negative side to counter that, especially for a debut. For me, it was mostly in the lack of surprise at some of the revelations. One did catch me by surprise and it did so at a crucial point in the story, with plenty of ramifications to bolster it, so Fiteni can certainly handle a revelation, but the rest seemed predictable. I saw through this and knew from the earliest who that was and wasn't at all surprised by where we end up, but I didn't find myself disappointed by how easy it was to see how things would unfold. I enjoyed the ride anyway.

And so, this may not be tailored to romantasy fans as much as they'd like but they should enjoy it anyway and so should regular fantasy fans, especially those with a fondness for stories rooted in folklore. I'll happily pick up Fiteni's next book to see where she goes with that.  ~~ Hal C F Astell