Book Review: The Daughters of Firth Tales by Willow

Overall

The Daughters of Firth Tales is a collection of stories told in sequential order by Willow, and they detail the years after she arrived on Earth with Sam, Ruth, and Plato at the end of On a Blue Moon. Each story expands the main cast of characters and the world while also providing a lot of interesting information about the meddling Firthians. There are wonderful messages of love, hope, and family woven through each story, the threads working to connect each story to make a whole. But there’s also an underlying theme of revenge, which was quite interesting especially since the main nemesis was quite powerful and very much at odds with the first of their kind. I really enjoyed this book and loved that it had everything I loved about the first book. This is both beautiful and haunting, but always offers hope and love.

Extended Thoughts

The Daughters of Firth Tales is a collection of stories told by Willow, a girl from the Blue Moon who returned to Earth with Sam at the end of On a Blue Moon who is now grown and the mother of a very special child. There are four tales, each of which is connected to the story before and which focuses on the same group of characters as their circle expands. A race of beings Sam calls the Meddlers, but who are really more like energy spirits descended from Firth, the first being to shed her physical body, have a habit of taking people, animals, and plants from Earth and depositing them on other worlds for their own games and experimentation, though one, Shadow, has almost become a friend.

In these stories, Willow tells of how her life after being taken to Earth changed, how she became a mother, and how some Firthians became their friends while others became enemies constantly seeking revenge. Throughout all of them, there’s a strand of hope, love and family, and hints of the terrible future we are hurtling towards if we don’t do something now.

The first book in this series, On a Blue Moon, was tragically beautiful, and I have been waiting to get back into this world. While I’m not a big fan of short stories or collections of tales, I felt The Daughters of Firth Tales kind of straddled between short stories and a novel as the tales followed in a linear fashion and built upon each other. I loved that all the beautiful and painful messages and themes of the first book carried through in this one. The Daughters of Firth Tales isn’t always easy to read as it mentions things like rape, murder, and torture, but there’s always this thread of hope, love, and family. It’s a hauntingly beautiful read.

The Daughters of Firth Tales features a steadily growing cast of characters. From the core characters of Willow, her adopted father Sam, Sam’s wife from the Blue Moon Ruth, and their ever-curious friend Plato, it expands to include the children of Willow and Sam, respectively, as well as partners, extended family, and new friends. By the end, there’s quite a cast of characters, but, since they’re gradually added into the main cast, it was mostly easy to keep them straight. In the individual stories, as there are other characters who are more story-specific, it was a little difficult to keep them separate as the men tended to be very alike and the women tended to be a lot alike though with some more minor differences between them. I loved that all the women were, more or less, quite strong and determined and that the men were some truly good souls who cared about the people they loved and would not condone violence, but it made them run together in my mind a little. I loved Plato because he was so different from everyone else, and I loved his thirst for knowledge. Everyone else, though, felt a little too alike so I got them mixed up a little.

What I absolutely loved about The Daughters of Firth Tales was really getting to see more of the world. With each tale, it expanded. It was fascinating to see how the games the Firthians played affected the worlds as well as how much power they really had over the people they willingly displaced from Earth. They truly were meddlesome, and I really liked how some of it was for curious reasons while other reasons were just malicious and inhumane. Their powers were incredible to see and their in-fighting was interesting. Their meddling had some terrible consequences, as well as some that ended up being interestingly beneficial. But it was fantastic to see more than just Earth and the Blue Moon, as well as different points in time because the Firthians could do that. The world just exploded in this book, but it was never overwhelming. I had a great time getting to know each world and the peoples the Firthians brought to populate them, as well as the Firthians themselves.

At its heart, it felt like The Daughters of Firth Tales was focused on the idea of revenge. It starts in the first tale, and it rears its ugly head in each subsequent story. I liked that most of the tales had the same villain, but, as with everything else in this series, there’s always redemption of sorts. Everything wasn’t as black and white as it could have been. I did like how the drive for revenge drove all the tales and I loved that our group of fearless characters were ready and willing to rise to the occasion to not just protect each other, but Earth as well. They were truly an incredible group willing to go the distance.

The Daughters of Firth Tales really focuses on the ideas of hope, love, and family. This is clear in every story. It did sometimes feel a little repetitive because it made each one a little predictable, but I was engrossed in the trials the characters were put through, so it was easy to miss until I put the book down and had a moment to think about it. Most of the tales featured a brave soul who was willing to go against their society’s norms, which tended to be primitive and unwelcoming of any behaviors counter to what they knew. They also tended to paint the main cast of characters as a group of underdogs despite their amazing collective power, which did grow a little tiresome after a while, but I found myself immersed in each tale anyways. What I loved, though, was the strength of love that could be found in each story, the idea that everyone is worthy of love and being cared for no matter how different they are. In worlds where there was so much prejudice, there’s also a great deal of acceptance and love given by the main cast, and the idea that family is those you love and not just those you’re related to. The bonds they formed were absolutely beautiful and I loved how they were willing to do whatever they needed for each other.

I found The Daughters of Firth Tales to be an immersive experience. No matter how terrible the native society of any given world was, no matter what games the Firthians decided to play with the people, no matter how much hate and prejudice was spewed, the characters captured my heart and I really enjoyed exploring the worlds with them and their gentle hearts. The love they had for each other was wonderful and beautiful and I felt they really held the stories together. Reading these tales felt comforting and familiar, and they all just had everything I loved about the first book. There are stories of love and hope and being strong for each other, which is just such a wonderful thing to read about these days.

While I’m not a big fan of individual stories in one book, I very much loved how interconnected these tales are. I loved how they built on each other and how the main characters were just always there for each other. The Firthians were wonderful to get to know better, and it was quite thrilling when they made enemies of some of them. But the overwhelming love of the main characters was powerful and was probably my favorite thing in this book. It was a lot of fun to read more of Willow’s story and the stories of her loved ones in this way. As much as I would have enjoyed a single story, I appreciated how much Willow was able to pack into each tale and how necessary each one was to fully understand how all the characters, human and Firthian and other, came together

The Daughters of Firth Tales is a beautiful and heartbreaking collection of tales. While they tended to revolve around revenge and the malicious games the Firthians decided they were allowed to play, there are a lot of beautiful things happening in each story. I loved getting to spend more time with the characters I met in the first book and all the people and creatures they subsequently met. I do wish Sam had been more present, but I had a great time with all the females of the family as they tended to be the stars of each story. Overall, I loved The Daughters of Firth Tales just as much as the first book. Reading this one almost felt like very little time had passed between my reading of the first book and this one. It was easy to jump back in and I loved how this one had everything I already loved and appreciated so much.

How many cups of tea will you need?

5 cups

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Thank you to Willow for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

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