Fairfaxe (2011)

A novel by Tristan Newcomb.  266 pages.

Where to get it: Full novel (PDF) / Amazon Paperback or Kindle / Free first chapter

(to obtain a PDF copy for the purpose of reviewing this title, please contact us: lumalin.films at gmail dot com)

When you grow up reading tons of addicting paperback fiction – Roald Dahl, Steven King, Douglas Adams, Jonathan Gash, Steinbeck, Chandler, Wolfe  - the list spills across the floor…then, as you seep into adulthood, drifting more and more into non-fiction – pop-science, biographies, Theroux and his trains…and now you’re stuck in adulthood, and you can barely get past a single page of contemporary fiction franchises without rolling your eyes and wondering who the hell reads this by-the-numbers dreck?

But if that sounds like a mere frowny-face slam on mass-market fiction, it’s actually the sound of us swallowing a sharp disappointment in ourselves.  How the hell did we (*cough*, we at Lumalin) become such victims to our own intellectual annoyances that we can’t even lighten up enough to get through one damn harebrained Harry Potter chapter?  *sips coffee*  Just look at all those fans of popular fiction having a jolly time wallowing in the delicious silliness of it all, and we’re stuck on Bitterness Island with our disdain for sheep culture?  Why can’t we just summon up our ten year-old selves on those occasions when it would make our media-consuming existence a damn deal more sporadically enjoyable?

Perhaps we simply can’t.  But this lead to an intriguing idea.  What if a character as intellectually irritable as ourselves was placed within a raucous, whimsical, actiony-fantasy-adventure novel of the kind we used to devour when we were eleven?  Would that create the kind of fantasy novel that cynical folks require?  Would prematurely-clever ten year-old readers suddenly find themselves strangely bonding to this elderly, reclusive, slightly misanthropic, bipedal canine intellectual named Fairfaxe as he accidentally drags himself into a wild world of tangled troubles?  Could a character with obsessive-compulsive overthinking become a hero, or anti-hero…or perhaps something in-between?

So, taken one way, it’s a novel for smart kids – but not just for them.  It’s also a wistful adult ode to the lost fiction-addictions of youth, back when we could read such dippy, extravagant adventures and be completely absorbed.  In other words, it’s a chance to revisit fantasy fiction – because you won’t have to do it through a bespectacled child with a (*rolling eyes*) magic wand, or a pouty (*shaking head*) TweenWave vampire – but as Fairfaxe, exactly the kind of cynical malcontent you really are…damnit.