I don’t think I have ever read an eco-dystopian fairy tale before, at least not one written for children. The Mossheart’s Promise is an astonishingly good story with excellent and consistent world-building, its own historical context, and a well-established community.
A gardener gently gathers up the fairies in her garden and places them in a terrarium she has prepared, complete with everything they will need to survive for 100 years. “Someday, the world will be safe again. But for now, you must live in secret. You must hide.” The fairies agree and listen to her instructions and warnings. They will know when it is safe when a magic-infused seed she gives them blooms. After that, the terrarium will begin to rot. But of course, things go wrong. The fairies continue on for generations and try to adapt as the world around them decays and turns to mold. A religion has sprung up with The Gardener as its pious focus. Young Canary works every day in the fields, scraping mold from the crops, as all children now do. Schools have long since been abandoned. The mold is infecting the fairies as well. Canary’s grandmother once found a cure, but it is long gone. When Canary’s mother becomes infected, she sets out in her grandmother’s footsteps to find more of the cure. But the journey she thought would be easy turns treacherous and filled with creatures intent on killing her, but she also finds some unlikely allies.
The underground world is an entomological wonder. Various insect colonies are at war with each other, much as they would be in our world. Their personalities are well crafted to sound as if that is exactly what that kind of bug would sound like if it could talk, and what it would talk about.
Bravo, Rebecca Mix!
