Hanya Yanigihara creates a vivid word, that while different in key ways from our own, is also remarkably similar. Within that world, she sets three novella length stories: one in a gilded age era past, one in the early 1990's and one in a dystopian future. The stories could be taken as stand-alones, but when taken together act as panels on a triptych.
The characters in this may seem more vivid and alive than the people physically sitting next to you as you read it! But they resist being put into neat categories like "hero" and "villain." That's true of the four main characters whose cross-country journey we follow, but it's just as true as the side characters they encounter along the way. Characters who, elsewhere, would merely serve the plot, here have their own backstory and motivations.
This felt like a Victorian novel. Yes, that means it was slow at times, but the rich world and characters that it creates is well worth the effort it sometimes requires. It tells a story that's pretends to be fantasy, but is very much set in our own world nonetheless. I would actually call this more historical fiction than fantasy. Yes there's a fantastical underpinning, but the systems of privilege and oppression it depicts are very familiar. The academic setting is very much intrinsic to the story and is supplemented by footnotes to provide historical/linguistic context.
Eimear is Faerie. She left the land of her birth, to find a place where she felt like she could belong. She finds herself in the World, a strange place, where she is the only magical being, and she begins to build a life for herself. But when she encounters Finn, supernaturally beautiful but thoughtless and selfish, she gets angry. In a fit of rage, she casts a spell on Finn. It’s a spell that she can’t undo, even when she discovers that she’s ruined Finn’s life.
Finn is wealthy, arrogant, and cruel. He didn’t think twice about insulting Eimear until it was too late. Now, exiled from the only home he’s ever known, he is forced to make his own way, for the first time ever. He does have support- if he wants it. Eimear wants to assuage her guilt by helping him.
In an isolated place, thrown together initially out of desperation and need, Eimear and Finn find a way to live together. That alliance eventually blossoms into friendship, and even love. But before they can have their happily ever after, Eimear must go on a perilous journey that will force her to confront everything that she ran away from when she left Faerie.
