OLD FANTASY MERGES WITH MODERN CITY
RUTH FRANCES LONG’S A Crack In Everything is the first in the Dubh Linn series, introducing us to teenager Izzy Gregory, who lives a normal life with a normal family in Dublin. In this book, Ruth Frances Long will take you on a journey through Dublin (or Dubh Linn as the Fae refer to it) like you have never experienced before.
With real references and magnificent descriptions of Dublin, a city that I have lived and worked in for many years, A Crack In Everything succeeds magnificently in merging a modern normal city with a centuries old fantasy that will make you see Dublin in a completely different light.
I especially enjoyed the subtle introductions of Irish myths, legends and folklore into the life of the character, Izzy Gregory when she comes across a work of graffiti depicting a fallen angel as she searches for her lost phone down one of Dublin’s alley ways. I especially loved the glossary of terms and phrases at the back.
It’s here in this alleyway that she encounters Jinx, a surreptitious character that belongs to The Fae and is tasked by the Matriarch to retrieve an Angels’ spark, which according to him is inside Izzy.
As the relationship between Izzy and Jinx develops, she is quickly immersed in the middle of a feud between The Fae and the Angels.
Jinx tries to protect Izzy from the dangerous world but when a conflict arises and dark secrets from the past begin to emerge, neither Jinx nor Izzy are sure if they can trust each other.
A Crack in Everything is a thrilling, edge of your seat story suitable for everyone from young adults upwards. It will definitely hook you from the front cover till the last page and the best bit is knowing that there are two more books, A Hollow In The Hills and A Darkness At The End to follow.
Ruth Frances Long writes young adult fantasy such as The Treachery of Beautiful Things (Dial, 2012) and The Dubh Linn trilogy set in the world of demons, angels and fairies that exists alongside our own in modern day Dublin (A Crack in Everything (O’Brien, 2014), A Hollow in the Hills (O’Brien, 2015) and A Darkness at the End (O’Brien, 2016) .
In 2015 she was the winner of the European Science Fiction Society Spirit of Dedication Award For Best Author of Children’s Science Fiction and Fantasy for A Crack In Everything.
She lives in Bray.