Krazykiwi @ Kiwitopia

So, using up random few dollars credit I have left on Amazon, I grabbed this. 6 books for 99c, including at least 1 author I've actually heard really good things about. This ought to be interesting. It seems a mix of genres, all vaguely fairy related though, but some more typical fantasy, and others more urban/crossover.

Fairies are much more my "thing" than other typical pnr denizens. I think because of growing up in a fairly remote part of NZ, surrounded by dark forests that could easily be full of the Turehu (or Patupaiarehe) my older cousins told me scary stories about. Patupaiarehe are the mist children. You can never see them properly, only when it's misty and even then indistinct, and they seem to wear clothes made of spiderwebs. I love this NZ stamp with one on, he looks terrifically puckish, and though scary and powerful, they tend to be mischeivious and troublemakers. Somehow I always thought of them as having sharp pointy teeth too. 

Worse, I am "urukehu" - pale skinned. Light hair - it was red when I was a kid, and though dark now, it's noticeably not as dark as the rest of my family when we are together. It's a thing, where after multiple generations of dark brown, black haired people, out will pop one of us little white things. Urukehu used to be considered to have a patupaiarehe ancestor somewhere down the chain, although modern genetics tells us there was just a very pale skinned common ancestor somewhere back in Hawaiiki before the great trip to NZ around the year 800, leaving us all with a random recessive gene that nearly everyone carries and a small enough gene pool it sometimes pops up in the population. When I was little and being teased by the big kids, I sincerely hoped that was true. Now that I'm older, I kind of wish the fairy in the bloodline version was the truth.

So, as I said, Patupaiarehe are tricksters, but Maori legends like to think of us as a whole race of tricksters, so there's a lot of stories about trying to trick each other, and who comes out on top. So here's a well known maori legend about the Patupaiarehe, just for fun: How maori learnt to make fishing nets, courtesy of Te Ara (the NZ National Museum):

"One traditional account tells of a chief, Kahukura, who when travelling north found himself on a lonely beach just as night set in. He slept in the sand dunes, but was awoken by the sounds of voices and laughter. At the water’s edge were a group of patupaiarehe, the fairy people, catching great numbers of fish in a net of woven flax. Despite his fear Kahukura crept among them, hoping to take the net and find out how it was made. As it was dark, and he was short and fair like the patupaiarehe, they did not notice him as being different. He knew that if he could delay them until dawn they would flee to avoid the sun, leaving the net behind. He helped thread the gutted fish onto lines, but tied his knots so they would come undone again. This tactic worked, and the fairy people fled as the sun rose, leaving behind their net and the fish. From this Kahukura discovered the secret to making the net, and taught it to his people."

Oh, and the actual books? Haven't read any of them yet, but the box set is still on sale at 99c, so if, like me, you love the fae, you might want to pick this up.

THE UNFINISHED SONG (Book One): INITIATE - TARA MAYA

Dindi longs to become a Tavaedi, one of the powerful warrior-dancers who secret magics are revealed only to those who pass a mysterious Initiation. The problem? No-one in Dindi's clan has ever passed the Test. But Dindi has a plan.

WAR OF THE FAE: BOOK 1 (THE CHANGELINGS) - ELLE CASEY
Jayne Sparks, a potty-mouthed, rebellious seventeen-year-old, and her best friend, shy and bookish Tony Green, have a typical high school existence - until, along with a group of runaway teens, they are hijacked and sent into a forest where nothing is as it seems. Who will emerge triumphant? And what will they be when they do?

FAIRY METAL THUNDER - JL BRYAN
A teenage garage band steals instruments from the fairy world and begins enchanting crowds, but their shortcut to success soon turns them into enemies of the treacherous Queen Mab.

FEYLAND: THE DARK REALM - ANTHEA SHARP
Faeries. Computer games. When realms collide, a hero from the wrong side of the tracks and the rich girl he's afraid to love must risk everything to defeat the dangerous fey.
What if a high-tech computer game was a gateway to the perilous Realm of Faerie...

FAELOREHN - JENNA ELIZABETH JOHNSON
Meghan has been strange her entire life: her eyes change color and she sees and hears things no one else can. When the visions get worse, she is convinced she has finally gone crazy. That is, until the mysterious Cade shows up with an explanation of his own.

EVER SHADE (A DARK FAERIE TALE #1) - ALEXIA PURDY
A dark twist on faeries. For Shade, a chance meeting with a powerful Teleen Faery warrior who wields electrical currents and blue fires along his skin, has her joining him on a treacherous mission for the good Seelie Faerie Court across the land of Faerie. Magic and malice abound and nothing is what it appears to be.