Tojet by Nerissa McCanmore is the story of a girl named Tojet and her destiny in life to marry the man that the fairies have chosen for her husband.

Born in the year 566 on the top of a fairy hill Tojet has lived a life like no other child before her. Her parents live within the fairy hill whilst she has grown up with foster carers in the mortal world. She has been gifted with magical powers one of which is the ability to travel through time.

Merkit Terjit is a teacher in a Catholic school when one of the Sisters who also teaches introduces him to Tojet and asks that he take the young girl into his home to care for until such time as her parents can be located.

With her wild and fanciful stories of fairies and merfolk and magical powers Merkit at first believes that Tojet merely has a wonderful imagination and could make a living as a writer when she grows up. But the more he comes to know her, and the more he sees of her powers the more convinced he is that she has indeed been sent by the fairies.

But more worrying is the fact that Tojet is convinced that he is to be her husband and that he has been chosen by the fairies for her. She tells him of his own birth parents living in the fairy hill and that he is stable in one time so that she can find him.

Merkit tries to brush off her stories as merely the workings of an overactive imagination, he is happily married and Tojet is merely a child.

But life takes an unexpected turn with the death of his wife and Tojet, feeling guilty for her own thoughts about Merkit’s wife vanishes back to the where she came from leaving Merkit to pick up the pieces of his life alone.

Three years pass and Merkit has decided that the life of celibacy amongst the order is the one for him. He can continue to teach and devote his life to God. As a novice he has yet to fully commit to his new life when Tojet returns, no longer a child but a young woman of eighteen, proof of living outside of normal time.

With time against her Tojet must convince Merkit that his life is with her or lose him forever, she knows that to remain when he can no longer be with her would be torture for them both.

Will her love, combined with her magical powers be enough to win the man the fairies have decreed should be hers?

In some respects this story is a wonderful one, and the seductive world of the fairies is brought to life in a way that brings the reader into the story and makes you beg for a longer look at the mysterious and mythical creatures that reside in the other realms that Tojet is able to travel to.

However there are some aspects of the story that I felt could or should have been looked at a little more than they were.

Merkit’s role as Tojet’s guardian is rarely looked at later in the story when she has returned to win him back, the moral implications of this were something I kept expecting to appear but they never did. That he was acting as her guardian, for however short a period, was something that he seemed to forget when she re-appeared later a grown woman.

The moral battle he fought over which life to lead were excellently handled, but I did wonder why this other moral battle was hardly touched on.

I also found Tojet, although very wise in some things, having received the most unique schooling imaginable throughout many centuries, to be extraordinarily childlike in other respects. Even as an adult her wisdom seemed to be overshadowed by her childlike innocence. I appreciate that a lot of this could have been due to the fact that she had lived in other ages and times where morals, values and virtues were different to what they are today, (her close guarding of her virginity being one thing that seemed particularly odd in a woman who has lived in so many different eras), but this innocence, combined with Merkit’s position as her former guardian, made it difficult for me to see her as anything more than the endearing child she was when first introduced at the start of the story.

As a child Tojet is a wonderfully drawn character who quickly endears herself to the reader, but I found it difficult to like her as much in her more adult role, perhaps because of liking her too much as the child.

However that is not to say that this is not a good book and the fairy world is one which most readers will want to return to again.

 

OVERALL RATING : 
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