Fairyloot Adult #28: June 2024
After the delivery issues of April and May, the delivery of my Fairyloot Adult box for June fortunately went smoothly again!
The theme for June was Demons & Deities, a theme that at first didn’t really seem to fit with the rather dreamy theme card.
The book is namely The God and the Gumiho by Sophie Kim
In this delightful Korean contemporary fantasy, a fallen trickster god must pair up with a coffee-slinging, shapeshifting fox to track down a demon of darkness before it devours the mortal world.
Kim Hani – the once-terrible gumiho known as the Scarlet Fox – spends her days working at a café and trying not to let a certain customer irk her.
Seokga – a trickster god thrown from the heavens for his attempt at a coup – spends his days hunting demons and irking a particular gumiho.
When a demon of darkness escapes the underworld, and the Scarlet Fox emerges from hiding before quickly vanishing, Seokga is offered a chance at redemption: kill them both, and his sins will be forgiven.
But Hani is prepared to do anything to prevent Seokga from bringing her to justice, even trick her way into his investigation. Anything, that is – except fall in love . . .
While part of me is super excited about the potential of this, the other part of me is extremely skeptical. I don’t think it will be easy to strike the right balance between the ancient entities aspect and the fact that they walk around in the current world with trivial jobs and activities compared to their past and nature. So, I’m probably going to start reading this with some reservations.
Also, despite the fact that Fairyloot has had a separate subscription for a few months now specifically dedicated to Romantasy or Fantasy with a focus on Romance, I think that in this regular Fantasy box we also get quite a lot of romantic stories. Nothing wrong with that per se, but there could be a bit more balance for me. I think that for 2024 we have only gotten romantic fantasy thus far, so time to throw in an epic story as well.
The Fairyloot edition of this book comes with the same dust jacket illustration as the standard edition, but with slightly different colors. Fairyloot is usually the one to make the covers more purple, but this time they had to go for a different option. I myself have always been more drawn to purple, but I really like Fairyloot’s choice for blue here! It makes the orange fox stand out much more.
On the other side of the cover this time no alternative cover, but a very nice illustration of our two main characters by @monafinden.
For the hardcover itself, Fairyloot could go wild with purple, choosing silver foil for the illustration by @blanca.design that covers the entire board.
The illustrated book block then matches the dust jacket, with its blue color and design.
Inside, the same illustrator who illustrated the back cover made two more beautiful drawings for the endpapers. I really like the style. Very Kdrama-esque 😉
The book also contains a letter from the author with a digital signature.
As always, a very beautiful book produced by Fairyloot. If I saw those illustrations without having read the synopsis, I would immediately put the book on my TBR for when I want to read a romantic story. But because the synopsis refers to coups, hunting demons and the underworld, I find the cutsie appearance contradictory to this… Anyway, time will tell, if I ever get around to actually reading this book 😉
Cheers,
Charlotte
