Your sense of good and evil will become dangerously twisted (2 stars).
Warning: this series involves swearing, abusive relationships, violence, and sex.
On her daily commute, Cora Glass drives past a brightly colored, lively fairground sparkling with multicolored lights and intrigue. With dozens of attractions and an assortment of huge, striped tents with awe-inspiring performers, it seems like an event weeks in the making.
The only catch?
It appeared overnight.
This is the premise of the five-book Harrow Faire series by Kathryn Ann Kingsley, a suspenseful and disturbing story dripping with broken luxury.
It all starts when tired-of-life Cora Glass chooses to forego the entry ticket price in exchange for a part of her “seity” (a person’s memory and personality—what makes them them); she believes the threat to be all part of the faire’s act. Yet when she enters the faire and realizes that she can’t remember her favorite color, she begins to feel like the laughter and cotton candy are hiding something much darker. And despite meeting the maniacal and mysterious Puppeteer, who wants to steal the rest of her seity, Cora feels as if the Faire is calling to her…
Kingsley’s plot in The Contortionist, the first book, is beautifully crafted; it’s careful, suspenseful, and all the things a reader wants. I would also say that the final book in the series, The Faire, was extremely well planned and executed. Kingsley’s plot twists may not be the most unpredictable, but she skillfully develops a strong sense of suspense. Moreover, Kingsley’s ideas are unique; the concept is new, interesting, and will definitely get you thinking about the line between good and evil.
That being said, the three middle books (The Puppeteer, The Clown, and The Ringmaster) formed an almost indistinguishable, continuous plot. If you are looking for a series in which each book has its own conflict and resolution, this is not it. I felt as if the homogeneity and loss of individual plotlines made the middle of the series a lot slower and less interesting to read. Ultimately, I couldn’t tell you what happened in the second book versus the fourth, and I think that the three middle books could be distilled into one without sacrificing much in terms of the plot.
An area in which Kingsley no doubt excels, however, is in her worldbuilding. In The Contortionist, she writes, “The circus was an array of beautiful lights and strange flashing signs. It was an overwhelming array of movement and life.”
She shows that the faire is both gorgeous and undoubtedly off; the reader feels a visceral sense of discomfort about it that is hard to place. This uncomfortable tension in the setting mirrors that of the characters and plot of the series as a whole—it’s perfectly broken, and you won’t know where to draw the line between good and evil.
Kingsley also crafted two extremely complex main characters: Cora Glass and Simon Waite (the Puppeteer). Cora starts the series very relatable—she feels real, she is constantly at war with herself and her life, and she’s nice enough but no real hero. Her development is also very well done; she becomes simultaneously more heroic and darker, which makes you wonder whether her experience with Harrow Faire improves or deteriorates her character. Her story is very thought-provoking; you must judge for yourself whether she is ultimately good or evil.
Simon Waite is a perfectly crafted villain. After “tasting” the piece of Cora’s seity that she lost (her favorite color), he decides that he wants to have the rest of her—essentially drinking her soul. The chapters from his perspective are mind-bending and disturbing, as if you are seeing the inside of a true psychopath’s head.
However well developed Cora and Simon are individually, I cannot condone Kingsley’s portrayal of their relationship.
In the first book, it is handled carefully and portrayed as the unhealthy relationship that it is. However, as the series progresses, it seems as if Kingsley is implying that Simon and Cora are meant for each other, and she stops making criticisms of the union. Although Simon marginally improves over the series, he never fails to be a murderous psychopath. In The Clown, after Cora tells Simon “I don’t know if I can do this,” Kingsley writes (from Simon’s perspective), “That wasn’t a no.” These lines speak for themselves to Kingsley’s extremely problematic portrayal of this abusive relationship, especially as she never implies that this lack of consent, or Simon’s mindset around consent, is a bad thing.
Ultimately, the Harrow Faire series is both beautiful and disturbing. It, again and again, blurs the lines between good and evil until you are not sure who you should be rooting for, and the setting only adds to this topsy-turvy sense of foreboding. It does take this moral-blurring too far when it comes to consent and its role in Simon and Cora’s relationship, which is ultimately extremely problematic. If this were not the case, I would be able to give this series more stars than I do; as much as I usually enjoy reading about morally gray characters, there are certain lines that should not be crossed.
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