Faery in Shadow

by C.J. Cherryh

Avoiding other humans because of the curse placed on him, Caithe mac Sliabhan nevertheless aids a strange couple who claim to be husband and wife but look like twins to Caith, and who are under the spell of a witch

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fae, Science Fiction

312 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.

Reviews

[Violetta Vane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a huge fan of C. J. Cherryh, a prolific writer of many science fiction and fantasy novels, series and stories. She has the kind of vivid anthropological imagination that’s so crucial to world-building in both genres. When she writes science fiction, I always get the sense that her aliens are really and truly alien, not just humans with a few forehead wrinkles. The non-human races in her fantasy books are just as unique and compelling. Some of them she invents out of whole cloth, but she’s also written several books inspired by Celtic mythology: The Ealdwood Saga, Faery in Shadow and “The Brothers”, a short story that serves as the prequel to Faery in Shadow.

What I love about all these books is that they go back to the roots of Celtic mythology and strip away the Tolkienisms that most fantasy readers are used to. I’m a Tolkien fan myself — I grew up reading him — but there’s a limit to how much Tolkien-lite I can handle, and I reached that limit decades ago. Cherryh’s Celtic fantasy is told in epic language, but it’s clean and spare, not pompous. The supernatural inhabitants of this world are what the ancient myths would be like if they were made flesh. They are not simply a sexier version of modern humans. They have godlike, animal and human qualities in unpredictable measure, and their motives are often left a complete mystery.

Of all these books, Faery in Shadow and “The Brothers” are my favorites, because of the tight plots and because of the relationship between Caith mac Sliabhin and Dubhain. Caith was fostered by outlaws but is the son of a chieftain, and Dubhain is a pooka, a shapeshifting water horse, though he most often takes the form of a dark-haired young man. They’re thrown together by the machinations of Dubhain’s faery overlord, Nuallan. If you think this set-up is perfect for romance, you’d be right, and there’s a massive amount of homoerotic tension between Caith and Dubhain. Dubhain, being essentially inhuman, often torments Caith with a smile, but is forced to obey him and frequently says he loves him. Caith is a seriously depressed dude and full of anger towards the magical world. He hates having Dubhain’s service forced on him, but he also relies on him heavily. Despite the strong tension and some tender moments between the two, there’s no romance or sex at all in these books. The overall tone is incredibly dark and grim. In fact, they’re as close to true faery noir as I’ve ever read, and the dark side of humanity is shown just as much as the dark side of the supernatural.

The setting is pre-Christian Scottish highlands. There’s no attempt at location in a timeline, and I can’t judge the historical accuracy, but the feeling of this world is amazingly genuine. The descriptions have a timeless, mythic weight, balanced perfectly with concrete sensory details. I felt Caith’s frustration as he travels over the difficult terrain, and the landscapes of this book are absolutely gorgeous. I received a strong sense of a misty, watery world, visions of dark green over grey stone — a cold wind from a cold sea.

I highly recommend this book, and it's one I've reread many times.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the story well enough by itself but the writing style made for a very laboured read.

[Murray Writtle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the characters in this book fascinating but I don't think I acn improve on this review by 'Randym' on Amazon:
Caith mac Sliabhin has been cursed by the Sidhe. He wanders the world an outcast, with his companion Dubhain, a pooka who appears sometimes as a dark-haired youth, sometimes as a black horse. In a valley where things are somehow terribly wrong, they meet a beautiful young couple who need their help...a couple who may not be what they seem.

Though set in a Celtic fantasy world reminiscent of The Dreamstone and The Tree of Swords and Jewels, this book is more like Cherryh's "human among the aliens" SF, such as Hunter of Worlds or Foreigner. The aliens, in this case, are the Sidhe. These aren't J.R.R. Tolkien's elves. They are like forces of nature, unmoved by, perhaps even unable to comprehend, the things that are important to mortals. Yet one gets the feeling that they are fond of Caith, in their inhuman way. Poor Caith.

Cherryh has a knack for hard-edged fantasy, and it's on fine display here. As in Rusalka, magic works in this universe according to rules and limitations that make it seem almost like science. The characters also have more of an edge than you commonly find in fantasy. Cherryh's characters are always interestingly flawed, but Caith and Dubhain are especially so. Caith has had an exceedingly rough life, and has good reason for carrying the chip on his shoulder he does. He's basically a decent guy, but his hot temper and stubbornness often get him into trouble. As for Dubhain...well, he's a dark Sidhe, a pooka whose job it is to take horse form, lure men onto his back, then drown them. Talk about having a dark side! Nevertheless, he has a sort of elemental innocence that makes it easy to forgive his mischief.

What Pat Nussman called "the magic circle" - a situation where a pair of characters are forced to rely on only each other for trust and friendship - is quite literal here. Caith has been damned by Faery, more because of the family he was born to than anything he did to deserve it. He avoids human company for fear of bringing his misfortune on others. Dubhain is similarly damned for the crime of doing a good deed. In a moment of weakness, he rescued Caith rather than drown him, and for this failure, he was bound to Caith by geas. They are each other's punishment...but also friends, as much as human and Sidhe can be. Dubhain is wicked and feckless and not entirely trustworthy, but humans need companionship, and he's all Caith has - the only being it's safe for him to be with. Dubhain is a loyal friend, as much as a dark Sidhe can be, but he's not human, and doesn't live by human rules. He can't give gifts without strings attached; every kindness must be balanced by a cruelty, however small. It's just his nature, and Caith understands this, even as he curses it. They are devoted to each other, but neither will ever admit it. They taunt and tease each other incessantly, using sarcastic terms of endearment more suitable for lovers than friends.

[Arliegh Kovacs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Usually I like C.J. Cherryh's books but I didn't care much for this one. It was just too confusing.
My problems with the book:
On nearly every page Caith was damning someone or something when he could have just dealt with his problem and stopped blaming others for them..
Much of the backstory was presented in dreams which wouldn't have been a problem except that the dreamer always knew that the past in the dream wasn't his past and couldn't figure our if it was the Sight which would help him do something in the future.
Then there were all of the names I couldn't pronounce properly. When I read, I 'hear' the characters in my head and it drives me wild when I don't know how the person is 'saying' it. In several of her books, she includes a pronunciation guide for Gaelic words (and I've read books by other authors who do the same), unfortunately not this time. Of course, I know that Sidhe is pronounced SHe. I even know many of the diphthongs and their sounds or if they are skipped altogether (like the dh in Sidhe and the Si that's said SH like in Sean). But I still haven't figured out how to say draiocht. But that's just my own pet peeve and my own problem..
I struggled through this one but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

[Evan Peterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can only recommend this to die hard fans of the author.

This one-off has all the annoying parts of her writing ( unreliable narrator mixed with family soap drama and constant self doubt).. with not enough meat on the bones of the story or compelling characters to get me interested in the mystery revealed in the last 50 pages.

While I usually enjoy this authors slow reveal, I found myself skimming through about 100 pages of the main character whining and damning his fate while following two selkie kids across the moors and mountains to the sea.

Maybe it was the whiny main character.. maybe it was my failure to empathize with the plight of alien Sidhe, or just the over reliance on “ fate” to keep the plot going.. but something didn’t click for me on this one.

[Shay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Cherryh's writing style lends itself incredibly well to this type of folklore/fairytale fantasy, I loved Dhubain and his wild pooka nature, and I thought Caith had quite a lot of substance, but there was a surprising bit left lacking compared to some of her other books. The book opens with Caith having murdered someone, but we really don't get much of that later on. We also get him figuring out his lineage--that doesn't come into play, either, when I thought it would be a major plot point. And there were times where I simply did not understand what was going on because it was so vague or dream-like, and the character's reasonings weren't always clear. I think her biggest trouble is endings. Some of her books tend to fall off at the end (to be fair, endings are hard), and this one did too. I wasn't sure what was supposed to have resolved. But I loved the Scottish folklore inspiration and the vibrant characters, and still enjoyed.

[Helen Fleischer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dark and stormy nights, an unsympathetic narrator, and shifting realities all contributed to a hard slog. Bulwer-Lytton came to mind. The resolution, if it could be called that, was insufficient reward for the effort.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book much better than "Rusalka." I liked the characters more and the relationship between the human Caith and his fae keeper, the pooka Dubhain, was an interesting one, albeit a bit contradictory and not explored very deeply. There's a sense of history between them, but we don't see it, which is a bit frustrating. The book is written in a bit of a round about fashion, so you can't just breeze through, which isn't always a bad thing because much of the language and descriptions are very good. The presentation of Dubhain is very good though because he does seem like a truely alien being. A lot of times fae and fairies get presented as being pretty much just like humans, except prettier, magical, and long-lived. Dubhain presents a very different and intriguing picture. However, like "Rusalka," not a whole lot actually happens, there's just a lot of walking, being cold and in pain, and half-dreaming, which could get a little old, especially since I didn't care much about Ceannan and Firenne, the young man and woman whom Caith encounters and gets caught up with. "Faery in Shadow" is worth a read, especially for fans and writers of fantasy, but I don't rank it as one I want to reread.

[PG Pariseau · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate giving C. J. Cherryh a mediocre review, but this is easily the worst thing of hers that I've read. Over-written and under-plotted, this could easily have been half as long and might have been really enjoyable at that point. But the protagonist's repetitious self-pity and internal dialogue, the murky exposition, the maddeningly stereotypical "Irish" dialogue, and the ongoing annoyance of desperately looking in vain for anyone to identify with finally wrecked this, and I was happy to see it end. 1.5 stars, rounded up to two out of respect for Cherryh's many tales I've enjoyed.
BTW, I'd love to have a count of how many times the name "Dubhain" appears in the text: it might be a record per-page average. Maddening.

[Zachary Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

8.5/10


I really appreciated how Cherryh illustrated Caith’s thought spirals and how Cherryh went about constructing the plot to keep certain important things away from the witch antagonist of the story. Through Cherryh’s writing style, I really felt as though Caith’s journey was really grueling and emotionally exhausting for him. Caith and Dubhain’s connection is also quite evident and fun to read about throughout the novel. Also the 80s dark fantasy vibes stay strong from beginning to end. If you love Ridley Scott’s Legend, you will likely really like to love this story. There is also a whole lotta Irish mythology. Silkies, Sidhe, Pookas, and more!

My only qualm with the book was that there were a lot of moments where it was difficult for me to follow certain events that happened. There are reviews of this book that argue that Cherryh overwrote and under plotted. While I personally don’t agree with the under plotting of the story, I understand how someone might think it’s overwritten. That said, I felt as though the “overwritten” aspect of the book made me understand the uncomfortable and difficult nature of the journey Caith goes on.

If any of you know how to access the ebook Faery Moon, please let me know 😂.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

In revision now, to be published by Cherryh as an e-book.

[Ann Gimpel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all her work, this is deep and well plotted. Not an easy read, but I like things that make me think. Her world building is, as always, exceptional and her characters memorable.