Invisible Fairies And Sour Skittles

On my last excursion to the book store a book called Fairy Bad Day caught my eye. I was in the mood for something on the lighter cotton candy side and this fit the bill. First of all this seems to be a stand alone book, which is a nice break from the ongoing need to spread teenage angst out over multiple books.  It was a fun, quick read that will appeal to most groups who like a fun fantasy story.

The quick and dirty details are this, a group of kids who are sight-gifted (can see elemental's) all belong to Burtonwood Academy.  This is a school for kids who can see one or more of the various elemental's (fairy, dragons, trolls, goblins etc.) and train to slay them.  At some point in history a gate got opened up to another dimension and all of these pesky elemental's came through and started causing havoc.  The story centers around Emma and her friends Tyler and Loni and the new boy Curtis.  Emma just knows she is going to be designated a dragon slayer (every kid is given a designated elemental to train to slay), her mother was a famous dragon slayer before she died and Emma is the best at Burtonwood Academy.  Of course nothing can go according to plan and Emma ends up stuck as a fairy slayer.  Fairy slayer is about the farthest thing you can get from a dragon slayer and Emma is not a happy camper.  To make matters worse the new boy

Curtis get the coveted spot as dragon slayer.  Emma and Curtis are paired up on an assignment to cross train between designations which irritates Emma all that much more. Emma is hurt in an explosion at the mall while chasing down fairies. At this point Emma starts to see a mysterious dark shape that nobody else can see, but that the little fairies call a darkhel.  Apparently this darkhel squeezed through the gate when it was open for a few minutes and is now searching for the Pure One, a guy who's blood is passed down through generations and was used to seal the gate, and now the darkhel wants to use it to open the gate and let all his hideous brethren through.  Emma goes up against this thing a couple times and only escapes death with the help of her friends, and Curtis who she starts liking more and loathing less.  Eventually Emma figures out what the darkhel wants, and that the Pure One is her dad!  Her friends help her track it down and there is an epic fight that eventually ends when Emma pours ground up sour Skittles into a wound on the darkhel.  Everybody escapes with minorish injuries, Curtis and Emma hook up and they all live happily ever until somebody decides that there needs to be a sequel.

This was a fun quick read, I finished it in two days.  The story was fun and actually made sense the whole way through, the adult/kid relationships were actually fairly believable and the idea of using hairspray to try and kill fairies is kinda funny.  I liked that the lovey dovey part wasn't instant attraction, Emma early on was aware of Curtis's hotness, but that did not stop her from hating his guts for a while.  The "falling in love" was built up pretty well, she went from loathing, to tolerating, to liking so that was a nice change of pace.  I also liked how there was consequences for actions, when Emma's bad attitude and desperate attempts to change her principles mind on her designation went to far, she wasn't praised for her spunky persistent attitude as in some books, but got put in detention as would probably happen in real life. I liked the use of modern technology mixed with old school lore about these creatures, and I loved that the electronics geek was also the bouncy pretty shopaholic girl. The author made really weird use of italics to emphasize certain spoken quoted words in a way that was kind of confusing, and the story felt a lot shorter for all the words that you had to read (I'm not sure if any of that made sense :-) )  It was definitely written for the 10-16 crowd, but still fun.  I give it 3 out of 5 packs of Skittles.

What do you read when you need a break?  Do you ever use YA novels to stay caught up with all that young wippersnapper tech and lingo?  What is your "slayer" designation? (Mine is working on a way to slay mornings)