Brian Froud's Faerielands (Patricia A McKillip) Books in Order

This Patricia A. McKillip branch of Brian Froud's Faerielands is built around a single novel, Something Rich and Strange, but it still helps to think of it as part of a larger shared idea. Brian Froud created paintings of modern Faerie pressing against the human world, and McKillip answered with a coastal fantasy shaped by tide, weather, desire, and the pull of the sea.

The story follows Megan and Jonah, a couple living in a Pacific Northwest coastal community. Megan is an artist whose drawings of tide pools and sea life begin changing in ways she cannot explain. Jonah runs a curio shop and seems more grounded at first, but he is just as open to enchantment once old sea magic begins calling to him.

The setting matters enormously. This is not Faerie in a distant castle cut off from daily life. It is rocks, storm water, caves, salt air, and the feeling that another world may be living just under the surface of the one you thought you knew. McKillip uses the shoreline the way some writers use a portal. The coast itself becomes the border.

The danger here is temptation.

That is what gives the book its tension. Megan and Jonah are not trying to save a kingdom or recover a magic sword. They are trying to hold on to themselves, and to each other, while beauty, mystery, and undersea enchantment offer something deeper and stranger than ordinary human life. The stakes stay personal, but they feel sharp because the magic preys on longing, curiosity, and dissatisfaction.

That also makes this one of the clearest examples of how the Faerielands project works. Froud's images provide the mood and doorway, while McKillip shapes a quiet, adult fairy tale out of them. The pace is dreamy rather than fast. Atmosphere matters as much as plot. Readers who want loud action may find it gentle, but readers who like eerie modern Faerie, coastal settings, and stories where enchantment tests love will probably find exactly what they came for.

So even though this is only one book, it has the full Faerielands feel. The human world is close to breaking open. Nature is alive with old intelligence. And the real question is not whether magic exists, but whether two ordinary people can survive the invitation to leave themselves behind.