A fairy tale in modern times has a difficult path to tread between originality and an ode to its inspirations. The Sniggard’s Revenge, published in 2021 and subtitled simply “A Fantasy Adventure,” has plenty of both. At roughly 350 pages and about fifty short chapters, it’s a brisk, charming and sometimes brutal story about a farm boy, a stolen trinket and a grave guardian with a grudge. It’s a lot of fun to read, sort of like a Brothers Grimm tale with a wicked sense of humor.
The setup is classic folklore. Ethan Orgyle is a poor farm boy whose grandfather gambled away the family estate. He’s hopelessly infatuated with Arabella, the daughter of the bullying squire who now lives in the house that should have been Ethan’s. On a dare from his little brother, Ethan breaks the stone circle around the local Barrow, an ancient burial mound.
He survives an attack by a monstrous bird and escapes with a silver gorget whose engraved warriors come alive in moonlight. He means it as a gift to win Arabella’s heart. Instead, he gets the squire’s wolfhounds set on him, and the Barrow’s undead guardian, the Sniggard, comes looking for what’s his. From there the book splits into two worlds: Ethan stumbles into Faerie and has to rely on a witch and some wandering fae to find his way home, while back home the Sniggard carries Arabella off to his tomb and Ethan’s father is jailed for the crime.
Chapman’s Faerie feels like a real place, not just a vague fantasy backdrop. It’s full of creatures like a knucker lurking beside a ford, toads with teeth guarding flower beds, sirens singing up from a gorge and a royal stable of unicorns. There’s a whole political layer too, with tension between King Hrothnowigia’s realm and the lawless Free Faerie lands.
The rules are consistent and feel like the author put a lot of thought into them. There are gates that wander from place to place, magic that clings to you like a dusting of snow, and an economy where knowing things is worth more than owning them. Overall, it’s a beautifully realized world.
A likeable main character is a must in a coming-of-age adventure. Thankfully, Ethan himself is a flawed and believable lead. He’s proud, impulsive and quick to think up a grand plan without thinking it through. Nearly every disaster in the book grows from one of his decisions. That makes the story feel driven by character rather than plot, and it makes his character development feel earned. He is rarely quite the hero he imagines himself to be, but at the same time, it’s hard not to root for him.
The characters around Ethan are just as memorable. Brom is a delight, cheerfully cryptic and never in a hurry, and fond of phrases like “sniggle-snaggle.” Trukle, a knife-throwing faerie trader, is a fine foil. The standout is Calvin, the squire’s put-upon stableboy, who turns out to be the cleverest person in the book and finds a surprising, fitting new life by the end.
Arabella is more than a damsel. Trapped in the dark tomb, she arms herself with stones and an enchanted staff and fights back. Best of all, Chapman lets his monster be a person. The Sniggard’s own chapters, told from the point of view of an ancient warrior baffled by the modern world, are some of the funniest and saddest in the novel.
The prose is clean and confident, full of earthy rural imagery that grounds the fantasy: manure and bakery smells, salt marshes, hawthorn hedges. Each chapter is short and usually ends on a hook, which keeps the pages turning even through the slower stretches. The author is especially good at fish-out-of-water writing, as in this passage from the Sniggard’s point of view:
Strange how trees grew these days. Who would have imagined a forest stretching for leagues but only one tree wide? And then there was the copse he had traversed where all the trees were of the same kind and height and arranged in rows like the grid of a Morris board.
The book’s potential weakness, depending on the reader, is tone. Cozy breakfast scenes with the talking cat sit right beside graphic gore: a split skull described in close detail, the fingertip cut off and burned shut, a rotting corpse. There’s also a kidnapping with sexual overtones. Several chapters move into the heads of adults, including Ethan’s parents and the squire, with adult worries about money. Each style works on its own, but the switches can jar and the target audience isn’t always clear.
Personally, what stayed with me most was the relationship between Ethan’s parents, Kilvin and Rhoslyn, which is one of the most touching in the book due to their deep loyalty to each other, built around a cherished family story about how Kilvin won her wedding ring. When their son goes missing, that bond is tested. It also makes a telling contrast with Ethan’s own starry-eyed devotion to Arabella, a girl he has barely spoken to, and leaves the reader wondering whether he understands what real love looks like.
In sum, The Sniggard’s Revenge is an imaginative, often funny and sometimes surprisingly moving adventure with a memorable cast and a rich, carefully built world. Its rough edges are easy to forgive when the characters are this much fun to spend time with, and it ends with plenty of reasons to look forward to the promised sequel.
