There are some books that read like a fever dream. Wild, impossible, manic – but so very real all the same, you swear by it . Such is Folk, a meandering set of stories that slowly weave together an unforgettable tapestry of an island and its people. Characters we meet early on age fluidly across the chapters as the book rushes to an unapologetic end that leaves you wanting just a morsel more of this rich, dense poetry of lives led and lost in the fierce land of Neverness. 

Its language lush and stories poetic, Folk sucks you in right from its first story, Prick Song. Characters delightfully unspool across stories as we encounter legends, folklore and creatures steeped in the same sinister veil that Neverness is shrouded in. But as I amble through its cryptic prose, a sense of ennui grows in parts where the stories appear disjointed and the characters, superficial. It strikes me that each story could be so much more if only the authors sacrifice a bit of the purple prose for character complexity. If only the stories delve further into the characters’ inner worlds, the book could transform from a fleeting set of elegaic chapters into a bright, multilayered piece of work. Perhaps the best things about some books really are their covers.