Marsha's Reviews > Unseelie

The author has taken a new viewpoint on autism in this fantasy novel. People who had autism, in early years when it wasn’t understood, may have been considered to be changelings, the babies fairies left in cradles when they snatched away human children.

It’s a bold premise and Ms. Housman has given us a redoubtable heroine to pull off her interpretation. Indeed, Iselia (or Seelie, as her sister calls her) doesn’t initially seem to be the “wrong” twin. Yes, she’s cautious, uneasy in the swirling crowds that contain mortals and the fair folk (both of whom pose unique dangers) and worried about her sister’s latest scheme. But it’s Isolde who comes off as being the dangerous one. She’s criminalistic, amoral in her intent to pilfer from others and willing to shrug off Iselia’s very real concerns about pulling off a feebly planned heist.

Matters go awry and the twins are pulled into orbit of another pair of troublesome thieves. The action picks up quickly as the quartet dodge pursuers, enchanters, scavenging humans and race after a sentient runaway cart. Iselia has trouble with new people and Raze and Olani’s initial antagonism rubs her raw.

Iselia isn’t without feeling. On the contrary, she feels so deeply, it causes her latent magical abilities to flare out of control. In fact, Iselia isn’t like the cold, superior and haughty autistic types that I’ve encountered in other fiction. If she remains aloof from others, it’s because her changeling nature has roused suspicion in a society that has been taught to hate and fear them and has caused her no end of grief from the threatening ways of strangers. Her constant peregrinations on the road and their shared life of crime have tied her fiercely to her sister, the only other person who’s been there for her for the last four years. Her distance from other people therefore is wholly justified. We can side with her since all she wants is to return home to her comfortable living and her absent foster parents, both of whom she misses fiercely.

Even entry into the world of fairy, from which Iselia supposedly came, isn’t without its perils. With her foot in the human and fey world, Iselia seems to belong to neither.

It’s a grand story. My only complaint is with the ending; it indicates that this volume is to be the first in a series. Yikes! That wasn’t indicated in the title. If it had been, I might have eschewed reading it. My life is too short and my tsundoku too large to embark on book series.

However, people looking for a new slant on a condition that’s popping up in fiction and non-fiction alike will appreciate Unseelie.