Five titles with devilishly dangerous fairy deals

Trip Galey was born in the United States but has now lived in the United Kingdom for over half a decade. He has a Masters from the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and a doctorate in Creative Writing, and is a lecturer on the subject in Cambridge, with a focus on sci-fi and fantasy. He has had short stories and articles published in numerous places, such as a multi-award-nominated queer SFF anthology from Neon Hemlock Press, and his first interactive novel came out in 2021 from Choice of Games. He lives in London with his partner.

Galey's new novel is A Market of Dreams and Destiny.

At Tor.com he tagged five "favourite modern fantasies prominently featuring fairy bargains of one kind or another," including:

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly — Featuring The Crooked Man

After David loses his mother to a terrible wasting disease, she is replaced by both a new stepmother and a new half-brother. But David can still hear his mother’s voice, and one day he wriggles through a hole in the brickwork of his stepmother’s home and finds himself in a strange fairyland.

Getting back might be easy, and getting back with his mother at his side, alive and well once more, might be easier still, provided David is willing to make a simple deal with The Crooked Man (a terrifying fey figure known for stealing children). All he would need to do is speak his little half-brother’s name aloud to The Crooked Man. Simple.

But David is well-read in fairy stories (boy, can I relate to that!). He knows how dangerous bargains like this can be. And so he chooses to try and fight his way home the hard way. Remember that, should you yourself ever have dealings with the darker of the Good Folk: sometimes the wisest deal is not striking any bargain at all.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue