Fairies: A Dangerous History by Richard Sugg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
According to the races of the supernatural world, there are classes of spiritual beings that humans have arbitrarily defined with ostentatious pedanticism. For we treat the otherworldly guests of honors, such as archangels, angels, principalities, vampires, werewolves, trolls, big-foots, and even extraterrestrial aliens with awe-inspiring reverence. In contrast, fairies are regarded as sort of the underclass, juvenile guests reluctantly invited to a terrific festival of supernatural beliefs. Such spectral discrimination, argues author Richard Sugg in his Fairies: A Dangerous History, results from the fact that unlike demons, angels, and other ethereal beings of educated Christianity, fairies are in want of respectful scholarship codifying their existence and nature, cultural influence on arts and literature, and spiritual elements of faith/belief traditions in lettered authority.
The book is a meta treatise on why the author himself believes in the belittled mystical beings’ existence. Sugg takes us to Shetland’s remotest area to listen to a nonagenarian man whose vivid memories about fairy sights are amusing. Thenceforth, the author brings the readers to the fantastic feasts of fairies as seen and described by William Shakespeare and Edmund Spencer as the rulers of the Vegetable Kingdom in their Elysium of poetic fancy, Sugg keeps us hooked on pages after pages filled with his magic spells of words because he sees and believes in fairies with their own dangerous history. It is dangerous because the truth about them is theologically reasonable, spiritually potent, culturally dominant, and physically palpable.
In sum, this book is one fascinating account of fairies that serves the author’s purpose of educating and entertaining readers. The book is filled with the glamour spells of the author’s erudition. This book is something of the authorial account of the Fairy Folk.
A Cat in the Mirror 