FOG & FIREFLIES | Kirkus Reviews

A girl must brave a malevolent being’s far-reaching presence in order to save her abducted friends in Lehnen’s dark YA fantasy.

Fourteen-seasons-old Ogma guards the walls surrounding her village, like all the children who live there do. They keep a dense fog at bay, one that leaves the kids alone but somehow spirits away the adults. So, it’s the children, many of whom are younger than Ogma, who protect the older villagers. While the menacing fog, which often forms “phantoms” (shapes or voices), can hover for days on end, it periodically lets up. These are the times when the adults can make trades with the “Caravaners” who stop by the village bearing a wealth of goods. During a Caravaner visit, which includes a joyous festival and games, cloaked figures attack. They’re not fog phantoms, but what seem to be flesh-and-blood assailants—and they’re not after the adults, but the youngsters. Ogma can’t stop them from kidnapping her friends and gives chase through the forest and the merciless foggy atmosphere outside the village. While the fog allows her a small clearing, she can still get lost (one of the reasons the kids wear bells) and may run into any number of dangerous beasts roaming the woods. She comes across all sorts of creatures out in the bigger world; some prove to be allies, and others are not quite as accommodating. Ogma is determined to rescue her friends; along the way, she picks up myriad details about the fog as well as an old myth involving another potentially antagonistic being.

Lehnen suffuses this debut novel with an unrelentingly grim tone. Early scenes of the children on patrol are wonderfully creepy and nerve-wracking; Ogma is fairly certain that the cries for help heard outside the walls are a phantom’s attempt to lure the guardians away. The cast is simply outstanding, starting with the young hero, who’s empathetic and courageous. She acts as an older sister to many of the kids and looks up to Wheeler, a village boy who’s a few seasons her senior and is struggling with his own slowly escalating fears. The narrative provides a variety of engaging character exchanges: Ogma befriends Dunkirk, a mysterious boy she saves from a creature in the forest; they somehow understand one another, despite his speaking a language Ogma doesn’t know. She later has enlightening discussions with a trio of characters who don’t speak at all, communicating solely through pantomime. The fog is an enigma from the beginning, and the characters’ efforts to shine a light on the ominous presence only make it seem vaguer and more perplexing. The same holds true for Ogma trying to comprehend the motives behind the abduction of the children. This murky approach doesn’t diminish the pull of the story’s prevailing undercurrent—a tenacious young girl’s fight to make sense of a shadowy, uninviting world. Leavening the book’s somber mood, the author adds welcome hues throughout the narrative descriptions: “Brightly-colored linen cloth, homespun quilts, and woven carpets decorated the square. They were arranged artfully, competing with each other for the eyes of the caravan traders.”

This somber but wholly absorbing coming-of-age tale unspools in an indelible otherworldly land.