Review: Cold Tom by Sally Prue

Why you might want to read Cold Tom:

1. Faeries.
2. Really different faeries.
3. As in, at first reading I wasn’t sure what species the protagonist was, he seemed so far from human; the characterization was almost like some animal-centric stories.
4. I.e. these faeries are feral, without ever having been tame.
5. Remember how the red-headed woman describes the faerie folk to Kate in The Perilous Gard? “They cannot be moved by pity because they have no hearts in their bodies” (p. 79).
6. These faeries hate, loathe, and despise humans.
7. Tom, the titular character and protagonist, absolutely would do harm to the humans who find him. He sees his endurance of their presence as captivity; but he needs them, resent his need and their existence though he does.
8. There are complex and unusual faerie relationships.
9. Also human relationships of the kind that veers between hostility and friendship, between love and resentment and all the bright and sullen complexities that can develop between parents and children, between step-parents and step-children, and between step-siblings.
10. Also between friends.
11. Also there is an elderly neighbour to the two human children of whom it would be difficult not to be fond.
12. Examines – without seeming to examine – possession and ownership and rejection and belonging and claims on other living beings.
13. Also what it is to be human.
14. Wholly enchanting.