Since she’s done futuristics, ghosts, werewolves, vampires and time travel, in The Forest Lord the flexible Susan Krinard takes on the Faerie (Fane) world, placing it in a single title Regency framework. The book starts slowly: a heavy amount of backstory and the initial courtship of the hero and heroine, which is complicated, melodramatic and involves a great deal of telling instead of showing. Then about halfway through the pace picks up and the plot sheds some of its gloomy overtones.

The short of the backstory: The Forest Lord wants go to Tir-na-nog, but the Fane leader says he can’t unless he brings a child of his loins with him. He lives in the forest of Hartsmere and keeps its human owners successful as long as they stay the heck away from him. One of the owners, Lord Fleming, decides the Forest Lord is a myth and ends up renting his daughter’s womb to the scary antlered guy in order to stay alive. TFL masquerades as a distant cousin and seduces our heroine Eden during an elopement, but Eden chances upon her father and her future husband arguing about the bargain--not to mention sees TFL’s true form--and takes off. When her baby is born, her father tells everyone, including TFL, that the child died, Eden marries mean-hearted wastrel Spencer Winstowe, her father disappears, and the Fleming fortunes collapse.

Five or so years later before Eden’s husband dies of some wasting illness, he tells her two things: she is 1) broke and 2) a mother. While she knew about the first one, she is stunned to discover the second. Her aunt Claudia does not want her to look for the son or repair to the house near Hartsmere, which is all Eden has left, but Eden does both. There she is greeted by a newly arrived boy, her son, and a rude peasant, TFL in a different disguise, come to seek revenge on Eden for tricking him.

Naturally Eden finds herself drawn to the peasant and he to her, even though the Fane cannot love, etc etc, you know the drill. She comes to rely upon him as she sets about to repair the family farm and win back the loyalty of the locals. TFL obliges her by causing nature to cooperate and begins to regret his mortal-hatin’ ways.

The Big Misunderstandings and Tear-Jerkers which could have been this book’s complete downfall are mostly worked out in the first half. Eden tells “Hartley” that she thought her son was dead and she and her son develop a relatively good relationship. Aunt Claudia is revealed to be creepy and obsessed with getting the child away from Eden as well as getting Eden back into society. Nobody dwells on the miserable life the boy led previously. However, TFL does not admit to Eden who he really is and decides the kindest thing to do is knock her up again before stealing his son. He also agonizes more than you’d think one of the Main Fane would over the fact that Eden found his stag-human incarnation frightening way back when.

There are many interesting folk customs woven skillfully into the novel, but the secondary characters primarily serve as a backdrop to the triangle of Eden, TFL and their son. The protagonists are not particularly scintillating or unusual, not even TFL, even though he is otherworldly. As in most of Krinard’s stories, the worldbuilding is sufficient to enable suspension of disbelief, which is important. I enjoyed the second half of the book more than the first, and the plot has an ending that ties up loose threads I didn’t even realize existed while creating an unexpected opening for a sequel. Perhaps that bow at the end was unnecessarily neat, but it will please lovers of very HEA’s.

If you like lighthearted or whimsical faerie tales, this is not a book for you. However, one would presume you wouldn’t pick up a Krinard romance if you were in the mood for a laugh-fest, anyway.

Our thanks to the Science Fiction Romance newsletter and editor Jody Wallace for allowing us to reprint this review. This review originally appeared in their October 2002 issue.