Granted (John David Anderson)

Granted
John David Anderson
Walden Pond Press
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Humor
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Ophelia Delphinium Fidgets is as focused and dedicated a fairy as ever lived in Haven, the hidden mountain sanctuary of her kind. She even belongs to the most rarefied guild, the Granters: the fairies who go out into the human world to grant wishes made on falling stars or birthday candles or coins dropped into fountains or such. Once upon a time, most any wish might be granted if a passing fairy took a fancy to it, but in this day and age, with fairies forced to hide in concealed sanctuaries and belief in wonder at an all-time low, there's scarcely enough magic to spare for a dozen wishes out of the countless valid wishes made in a day. So, while Ophelia has been trained for many seasons, she's never had a chance to go out in the field - until now. A girl in Ohio had wished upon a coin tossed into a mall fountain for a bike (a purple bike, because her bike was stolen, a nicely specific and worthwhile wish), and Ophelia has been charged with granting it. It should be a simple matter, a ritual ages old: find the nickel upon which the wish was made, sprinkle a little precious fairy dust on it, and say the magic words. But the fairy has never been in the human world before, and never realized how complicated it all was... or how easily one might be distracted by other wishes, others in need of a little magic in a world with precious little to spare...

REVIEW: This was a nice little break after some heavier, darker reads, and just long enough to last through a work shift as an audiobook. Ophelia and her kin are perhaps a bit on the twee end of the spectrum, little winged wish-granters of generally benevolent (if slightly mischievous and temperamental on occasion) disposition, but sometimes a bit of twee isn't that bad, and there's a little bit of weight to her and her world to make things interesting. The fae world, like the human world, is facing a resource crisis and what might be called a habitat or environmental crisis, pressured by humanity's increasing need to explore and know and drive out both the wild and the wonder that sustain fairies and their magic. Like humans, the fairies adapt as they can and generally (deliberately) do not look at how they arrived at their current crisis, most of them just doing their jobs and holding their festivals and dining at their cafes and otherwise not examining the rules or their society. Ophelia, as dedicated a rule-follower as ever flew, quickly learns that there are many things that the rules and her book studies haven't prepared her for, but she's a determined little heroine and refuses to let numerous setbacks break her will. She picks up a sidekick in the somewhat clueless stray mutt Sam, a comic relief companion who actually pulls his weight in the story. Pretty much everyone in the tale turns out to have extra dimensions to them, with their own stories and unspoken wishes, and Ophelia finds herself overwhelmed by how much need for magic there is, and how little she has to spare. Some of the turns are a little predictable (for an adult reader, at least), the humor can be a bit silly (again, to an adult), plus it could wander and dither a bit, but it's a fun enough adventure for what it is (and for its target audience), with a little more to it than one might expect from such an initially twee concept.

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