Fairy Tale (The Temple Chronicles, #0.5)
Fairy Tale by Shayne Silvers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Fairy Tale is the prequel to the Nate Temple Chronicles by Shayne Silvers, and is the first piece I’ve read from the series or the author. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The snark level here is exactly what I’m looking for when I choose to read urban fantasy. When I start gravitating toward UF, my life is generally becoming hectic in some sense. I go to UF because I know that I will almost always deliver fast-pasted, well plotted stories with a dynamic cast of characters and, in the best case scenario, a plucky protagonist who wields sarcasm as a weapon whom I can look forward to revisiting again and again as UF series tend to be long in installments instead of hefty books.
Nate Temple is an incredibly fun protagonist, one I believe to be on par with Harry Dresden and Atticus O’Sullivan from the Iron Druid Chronicles. He has a very strong voice, and I really love it. He’s sassy and intelligent and a believable mix of lazy and driven. I love his relationship with Gunnar, his lycanthropic best friend, and their banter is a pleasure to read. I also really enjoyed Nate’s inner monologue, which demonstrated his ability to find humor in even the most terrifying situations. My favorite example of this is below, and actually made me laugh out loud.
“If Wes Craven and Stephen King’s most horrific, most terrifying, personal nightmares met at a bar for a few drinks, ended up boinking at a cheap hotel, and producing a fledgling monster baby together, this figure would have terrified it.”
There are a couple of interesting differences I’d like to note between this book and series like the Dresden Files and the Iron Druid Chronicles. First, Nate actually has a family among the living, one he has a pretty decent relationship with. From the UF series I’ve read, this is fairly uncommon. Protagonists often build motley families of their own, but they seldom have living biological family with whom they have a healthy relationship. The fact that Nate has both parents, who are still married and seem to love each other, is something I haven’t seen in any other UF series I’ve read. Also, Nate is from a famous family, and is often recognized by people in public, whether these people are magically inclined or not, which I think is also unusual for protagonists in this genre.
The best thing about this little novella? It’s free! If you visit the author’s website and sign up for his newsletter, he will send you Fairy Tale as a free ebook. If you enjoy it, Silvers has written over twenty other books in the same universe, with twelve of those being told from Nate’s perspective. That’s an insane amount of published works since 2012! If you happen to have Kindle Unlimited, every single one of these is available to borrow from there, as well as being available for purchase for reasonable prices. I don’t usually this much of my review on where and how to get an author’s books, but if this prequel is any indicator, the Temple Chronicles are going to be a fun, addictive read that are also a great deal. Silvers is prolific and appears to be self-published (correct me if you see that I’m wrong!), so I wanted to include a little extra information here in support of his efforts.
If you love urban fantasy but have never picked this series up, I definitely think it’s worth your time to grab this novella and give Nate a chance. After all, what do you have to lose? It’s free!
Don’t forget to visit the author’s website for your free ebook!