Name: Honeycomb
ISBN: 9781534433052

Joanne M. Harris

"The toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. These are just a few of the weird and wonderful creatures who populate Joanne Harris's first collection of fairy tales"--

Honeycomb

Seher Mohsin

Joanne Harris

Lorraine

‘There is a story the bees used to tell.’ I can’t believe how much I loved this book. From it’s beautiful cover, it’s amazing illustrations by Charles Vess, to its enchanting, sometimes dark fairy tales about love, hate, revenge, death and magic.

It follows the life of the Lacewing King, telling stories full of rich characters and worlds of magical insects and animals. It surprisingly also has fables interwoven throughout bringing in politics and current events.

I feel a little sad having to leave this magical world behind, it was definitely a book that jumped into my hands at the right time, stories that took me to intricate make believe worlds. Just beautiful!

Cecilia Bala

“There is a story the bees tell…” Dark, full of whimsy, this book is full of amazing stories and allegories. Featuring a dark king, a clockwork princess, and many different fae creatures, you’ll journey through different magical realms along the river Dream. These worlds all seem so different, yet are intricately connected, since the worlds are Honeycomb, you know. 

Cheryl Hedlund

There is a tale the bees tell....  A fairytale novel built of interconnected stories. A magical adventure through the nine worlds connected by the river Dream. Some of the stories read like fables. The prose and the storytelling have the feeling of very old fairy tales with a few modern tweaks here and there to characters and tropes. The Fae (or Silken Folk in this book) are full of nature magic and trickery. Like the old stories, there is violence and death. As some characters keep coming back, we get character development for several key characters. The author weaves an intricate story web and I was caught up in it. There are beautiful illustrations (black and white as well as some color). In a word, enchanting.

Honeycomb has been languishing in my book shelf since mid September. It was in between six crimson cranes and the museum of lost things. Part of me often felt like picking something out of that stack, but between my book tour reads, the books i had started, and the arcs I was missing I felt like I couldn’t until late in December when I decided to use a tarot card method of picking out cards to pick out books. You’re supposed to medicate and then sort of hold your hands above the cards, in this case the book stack, and then pick out one that calls to you; that could be it feels colder or warmer or anything, you decide. This was how I picked up Honeycomb.

Opening up the book I wasn’t sure if it was a kids book or an adult book. Between the beautiful paper, cover, and illustrations, it felt like it couldn’t be for an adult. But it was. Especially at the end of the first story, where the midwife’s eye is plucked out of her socket.

She often dreamed that if she believed, then one of these trains would stop for her and take her to a world in which magic was as everyday as science was in her own world, where animals spoke; where Kings and Queens rubbed shoulders with monsters, and witches, and fairies, and where Love was an adventure, not an ending to a story.

Honeycomb involves a multiverse tied together with stories. Each story is interlinked even if you don’t see the connection immediately. The first obvious thread is the Lacewing King, but as time goes on other characters and stories come together to form the whole. There are queens, and princesses and princes in every way shape and form, there are women running away, train drivers and mermaids. You have a man who leaves a bit of his soul in everything; the Halloween King who gives up his own life for his sons; and an artist who paints the most perfect apples; and the barefoot princess, whose grandmother had the most unfortunate ending. Each story seems like a fairytale, they’re certainly written like fairytales, in beautiful lyrical prose; and then they end leaving you slightly mournful and a little disturbed. 

Even though Haris has so many characters that appear in these stories, its easy to become invested in them, especially the ones that appear more and more. There was a moment where I wanted to stop reading just because I couldn’t bear to think about what had happened to the barefoot princess. And, after all he had said and done, I didn’t want anything to happen to the lacewing king.  

While this was something I started in 2021, I’m glad to say that it’s my first 5 star read for 2022