The Darkest Part of the Forest
core novel 2015 The Folk of the Air / The Modern Faerie Tales
Record
| First published | 2015 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.86 (89,086 ratings, collected 2026-09-28) |
| Page count | 336 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780316213073 |
Synopsis
In the town of Fairfold, humans and the Folk live side by side: the faeries lure tourists into the woods and strike cruel bargains, and the townspeople mostly know better than to interfere. In the darkest part of the forest lies a glass coffin, and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives, who has not woken in living memory. Hazel and her brother Ben grew up telling each other stories about him, that he was a prince and they his valiant knights, and pretending he would be different from the other faeries. Now that she is older Hazel has put the stories away, certain the horned boy will never wake. Then one day he does, the town is turned upside down, and Hazel must become the knight she once pretended to be.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Folk of the Air / The Modern Faerie Tales
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: Holly Black
Notes
- Standalone set in Fairfold, in the same faerie world as The Modern Faerie Tales and The Folk of the Air; the publisher's own description says 'Set in the same world as The Cruel Prince'. Little, Brown, January 2015.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within The Folk of the Air / The Modern Faerie Tales (standalone work): position 4 of 10: previous Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale (2007) · next The Cruel Prince (2018)
Sources
← The Folk of the Air / The Modern Faerie Tales dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.