How Does It Feel?

How Does It Feel? belongs to a subgenre of fantasy that readers often call romantasy: The hallmarks of the genre include meet-cutes, such as when Callie literally drops in on Mendax; a story told from the female protagonist’s perspective; and forbidden and/or interspecies love, seen here between Fae and human. The romantasy retells a classic fairy tale or presents a story with classic fantasy creatures. In this novel, the author introduces fairy lore, setting the stage for these tropes to develop in the series itself while also incorporating a high level of fantasy, from beasts to portals. Callie’s story begins as a potential romance—big-city scientist moves to small town to study the local wildlife and nearly sparks a romance with Cliff Richards, the game warden. However, she soon falls into a literal fairy tale when she enters Prince Mendax’s Unseelie realm, thus complicating both the traditional romance and fantasy genres, respectively.

Callie’s fascination with all creatures winged begins when she experiences a fairy sighting as a child. Though dismissed by the adults as a hallucination induced by fungi, Callie knows better. She protects the “helpless fairy” from the crow who attacks it (26). She is rewarded for protecting the golden fairy—Queen Saracen of the Seelie—with access to a realm beyond the ordinary, a common trope of the romantasy novel. After her mother and sister die in a car accident, Callie is partially adopted by the Seelie royals. She must prove her loyalty to them, which lands her in Mendax’s Unseelie court. The motivations of fairies and humans are often at odds, and the mercurial nature of fairies is well-documented in the folklore. Rather than being one-dimensionally kind and welcoming, Callie must earn her position with the Seelie.

The author also explores tropes within general fantasy tradition, such as other worlds, damsels in distress, and shapeshifting. The portal into Mendax’s realm is evidenced by the aptly named destroying angels mushrooms: “They form a circle of mushrooms when they’re fully grown. [...] They call them fairy rings [...] a portal to the human world from the other worlds, that the Fae used them to travel” (50). Portals allow the fantasy to flourish, and these mushrooms contain a high level of toxicity, which explains away the otherworldly experiences of those who stumble upon them, lending a sense of reality to the text.

Within fantasy, entrapment and rescue are common themes. Callie is caught in Mendax’s dungeon, yearning for escape. Because of her immersion in fairy tales, she firmly believes that “[s]omeone would show up to help [her]” (85). Traditional romance novels tend toward the woman in trouble being saved by the hero and love interest, who is a man. However, aligning with the romantasy subgenre, Callie is a resourceful protagonist and frees herself, and the love interest is a villain, not a hero. However, O’Riley upholds certain motifs, such as humans serving as prey to amoral Fae, as they are portrayed in old folklore. Fairies of folklore are neither evil nor good; they are simply of another world with different principles and motives. The shapeshifters that populate the novel—the fox that is Earl, the brown rat that is Walter—serve to emphasize Callie’s liminal status: Blessed by the fairy queen, she attracts the loyalty of animals, who try to keep her safe.

Finally, some Fae mythology suggests that humans become trapped in the fairy realm (or haunted by it) when they consume its food. Callie does not quite remember, but she thinks that Earl “had said something about not eating Fae food, that it did things to humans” (177). While the author never shows Callie indulging in fairy food or wine, the memory serves as a reminder that humans are vulnerable to the enchantments of fairies. Callie notes, more than once, that she does not belong in the realm of the Fae; humans are mortal, and they cannot withstand the magic of their otherworldly tempters. Partaking of fairy delights will doom a human to long for that world forever. In the novel, regardless of what Callie may have eaten, she is consumed by thoughts of Mendax and effectively unable to extricate herself from the realm of the Fae.