Changeling (Changeling, #1) By Delia Sherman

Neef is a changeling, a human baby stolen by fairies and replaced with one of their own. She lives in New York Between, a Manhattan alongside our own, home to creatures of folklore. Protected by her fairy godmother until she breaks a Fairy Law, now she must face the challenge of the Green Lady of Central Park or be sacrificed! Neef is determined, but time is running out. Changeling (Changeling, #1)

Delia Sherman µ 9 Free download

First, this book is in the same world as Delia Sherman's CATNYP from the Datlow/Windling The Faery Reel anthology & Grand Central Park from Datlow/Windling's Green Man. CATNYP introduces us to the protagnonist Neef & her friend Fleet; Grand Central Park gives us the Central Park Genius Loci (the seriously Big Bad here) & the fairy Bugle (mentioned in passing in Changeling). I liked both those stories; I loved the idea of New York Between.

Unfortunately...

Like others have stated here, I just couldn't warm up to Neef. Neef is a changeling, a human child stolen by Faery to live in New York Between, the modern day version of the Sidhe Realms, and the Faery left a substitute in the human world in Neef's place. When this story opens, we're thrown right into the Faery Realm & Neef's world right from the start -- she lives with her fairy godmother, a white rat named Astris, and Neef's being a typical human young teen: bored, wanting adventure, and tired of all the obvious secrets the adults aren't telling her.

We're never given a reason for the secrets, by the way. When Neef finally finds out that the Ruling Fairy of Central Park has laid a geas on Neef (Neef is not allowed to ever dance at the Summer Solstice, and she finds out about the geas by unwittingly breaking it), it's not only the first time Neef has ever heard about this, but no explanation is ever given for why that rule was so important.

Worse, the Central Park Genius (the ruler of the Park area of New York Between) promptly puts Neef under the equivalent of a death sentence for breaking said geas...which Neef never knew about to begin with because all the Faery folks around her won't/can't tell her, and we're STILL never given a reason why it's so important.

I mean, I get it, okay, Faery rules are arbitrary and nonsensical -- but that usually means they're just nonsensical to us humans. The Faery should have a reason for their rules beyond just because: do they hate rudeness? Is politeness mandatory in Faery politicking? Are mortal dangerous to the Solstice? Is it needed because of certain magics? Nope, the Park Genius just laid that geas on Neef when Neef was just a baby, the day she was stolen into Faery, and geased everyone else to never tell why. No reason. Just because.

The whole just because it's Faery reasoning gets damn thin before the first chapter ends. By the time the Park Genius banishes Neef from Central Park for breaking a rule she didn't know about & that no one could even tell her about...couldn't Sherman think of any better explanation than just because?

At that point, I was wondering why Neef even bothered to want to try to lift the banishment, let alone remain in Faery. Sherman unwittingly has shown us that Faery is an abusive home, with Neef being blamed for the Faery's abuse because of her actions -- Neef doesn't come right out and apologize for making the Faeries abuse her & kick her out of her only home & try to kill her, but dammit, I was fully expecting her to.

And since Sherman has Neef putting up with all this & wanting to go home despite everything, with Neef's Faery abusers giving her a big welcome at the end, it's obvious that Sherman had no clue of the abusive subtext in her writing -- this despite writing for several of the Datlow/Windling anthologies that explicitly posit faery tales as survival stories for abused kids.

What's worse? At one point, Neef meets her Changeling, the Fairy made to look like Neef & left in Neef's place in the human world. Neef makes it plain that she considers Changeling to be a useless load. She only helps Changeling escape a nest of monsters because Changeling knows/shares Neef's True Name; Neef refuses to help any of the other trapped children who are literally **reaching out & begging for help**, and Neef makes it very plain that she simply does not care about them nor feel any sympathy. Not once does Neef show any sympathy for Changeling, either, despite Changling having been stolen from her home & loving parents. Neef considers Changling as a useless annoyance...until Changeling turns out to be able to provide something Neef needs in her quest.

By the way, Sherman describes Changeling's quirks and habits in detail, and makes it plain throughout the story that all the other Faeries think Changeling is useless, unfit, & the lowest of the low, implying that's why they stole Neef & left Changeling in the human world. It's very obvious that Changeling is meant to be autistic.

So. Implying that the true Neef isn't autistic? That autistic folks are not only inhuman changelings, but imperfect copies, unwanted in faery & considered useless...until they have something someone wants? Sherman, did you even think about what you were writing?

Again, why does Neef want to stay with these unfriendly, arbitrary, sociopathic, abusive Faeries?? The longer the story went on, the more unfair crap that kept getting piled on top of Neef for no reason beyond it's just the way the Faery are (yeah, and family members justify their abusers' crap with it's just the way they are in order to make the victims shut up)...jesus christ on his fuckin' pogo stick, I was waiting for Neef to flip off the entire Faery Court & return to our world with Changeling.

Look, a just because works in a short story. There's not much space to explain a lot. But in a novel, it doesn't work. In the short story CATNYP, the Faery Snowbell takes exception to Neef questioning Faery love; ok, fine, Snow's a prickly, proud faery who felt challenged by Neef. We get that. Then we're told the stacks are dangerous, and we're also told and shown why! So it makes sense when the NYPL Genius tells Neef stay out of the stacks. The other rules he gives her make similar sense: food can damage the books, disturbances interrupt other folks' use of the library.

But in Changeling, none of the rules make sense. Neef's blind acceptance of the shit Faery puts on her makes no sense. Neef being told to take responsibility for something no one could tell her about, something she was actively put to sleep against her will over whenever the situation came up...and then Neef is blamed when Faery wants to kill her over the rules she wasn't allowed to be told??

Yeah, the abuse was all her fault. She was asking for it. Neef needs to apologize to the folks who want to kill her. How dare she not accept responsibility for everyone treating her like shit!

Y'know, Sherman, my parents pulled shit like this, too. I got in trouble over weird arbitrary rules that I didn't know existed until the parents were screaming in my face. I got in trouble & punished over things that should've been the adults' reponsibility to take care of, not a young child's.

That's called ABUSE, Sherman. It doesn't matter whether it's Faery or Human. Hardcover Great read! Fun little twist on fairy tales and magic lands. Hardcover I absoulutley loved this book. It was fantasy so there were mermaids,demons and the main character boy was she a handful. so if your done with your book pick this one up i garuntee you will love it. Hardcover Altamente entretenido, me mantuvo enganchada a la historia de principio a fin, lo que más me gustó fue la cantidad de mitología que manejaron. Lo único que no me gustó fue el final, que me dejó con ganas de más. Hardcover Changeling is funny and fresh and fine, another in the short list of fabulous books set in New York City published in the past year. It is takes place in New York Between, and Sherman balances the Between of Faerie with a terrific young heroine named Neef, ringing changes on every single New York and Faerie trope you can imagine, and a few you can't. Hardcover

While I never really warmed up to Neef, the protagonist, I thought her changeling counterpart totally, utterly rocked. I loved Changeling from the start, and she made perfect sense to me as what a fairy changeling raised in our world might be like, too.

Also, the time spent in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was worth the price of admission (so to speak) by itself. Hardcover A well handled quest. I'm glad to hear it went so smoothly. A lot of people get sick or even die on quests. It was comforting to know she had a fairy godmother looking out for her. Hardcover Some fairy books can cross over from young reader to older reader and the fanatasy world can be interesting for both groups. This books is really only for younger readers. I would not read it again. The character is interesting enough to finish the book but not to worry for or about, you don't get attached to Neef or the Changeling. The plot is simple problem and answer. But the unique animal characters and over all fantasy aspect should satisfy a new reader. Hardcover This book was really good, so the parts of it which were frustrating were really more frustrating than they would have been in a mediocre book, sadly. Fantastic world-building and a smart, self-aware protagonist -- yay! But that protagonist couldn't manage a believable interaction with any of the other people in the book -- boo! Neef had pretty much no empathy for anyone, no sense that she should be concerned in anything but a mechanical how-does-this-affect-me way with other people's feelings. There could have been a great story in there about what emotions really meant for humans raised by fairies and fairies raised by humans, but the opportunity was lost. The author's short story Catnyp, about the same protagonist when she's a bit older, was much more appealing. Hardcover This was a really fun read. It is structured in your basic 'magical middle grade quest' arc that fans of Rick Riordan will be familiar with, but Changeling and Neef are both characters and I love how they play off each other. I particularly liked how Changeling exhibited several kind of autistic behaviors [even though it's never discussed explicitly in the text] because a lot of the reasons that people historically would accuse someone of being a changeling would be because they were acting 'weird' and expressing behaviors now associated with autism although they obviously didn't have a name for it back then but I thought that was a nice little touch. I also liked how the author updated a lot of the 'classic' fairy tales to fit into modern New York life, like Jack and the Beanstalk became Jack and the Extension ladder, and having fairies hold domain over things like Broadway and Wall Street instead of more traditional fairy knowes. Definitely going to be checking out the next book! Hardcover