Robin Hobb’s fantasy fiction has repeatedly been noted for its nuanced treatment of complex issues, such as colonialism (Young 2014), honour culture (Caroll 2007), queer identity (Prater 2016; Melville 2018), and sexual violence (Borowska-Szerszun 2019). In my paper, I will use concepts from social psychology to analyse Hobb’s short story “Words Like Coins” (2009), in which Hobb makes use of fairy lore to probe the workings of xenophobia.

             “Words Like Coins” relates the encounter of two young women with a tribe of fairy beings known as pecksies, an encounter which is fraught with prejudice, and which very nearly ends in disaster for all. By providing a detailed account of the ways in which the pecksies are dehumanized by the human protagonist and her friend, Hobb’s story lays bare the mechanisms through which acts such as lynching and genocide are made possible, furthermore dismantling the conventional fantasy dichotomy between Good and Evil by depicting evil acts as caused by fear rather than malice.

            Moreover, as my paper will show, the narrative is constructed in such a way as to invite the reader to be complicit in considering these heinous acts. Through narrative devices such as limited point of view, the use of stylistic features borrowed from horror writing, and oblique allusions to fairy folklore, the reader is made to share the protagonist’s uncertainty and fear until the very end of the story. By thus making the reader complicit, Hobb’s story not only tells of, but demonstrates, the mechanisms through which “good” people can be induced to consider atrocities.

In an article entitled “Where Have All the Fairies Gone?” (1997) Gwyneth Evans delineates two trends in modern depictions of fairies: the “neo-Victorian” fairy and the “ecological” fairy. The ecological fairy, which is the type discussed here, denotes a class of “supernatural beings who are associated with the natural environment of a particular place, and concerned with its preservation," and Evans’ examples include Tolkien’s ents as well as the tiny flower fairies of the children’s movie Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest. Apparently, she concludes, the fairies have “[g]one to Greenpeace, every one."

            In my paper, I will use Evans’ concept of the ecological fairy as a departure point for an ecocritical interrogation of Emma Bull’s urban fantasy classic War for the Oaks. “The link between the fairies and one beloved place,” Evans writes, “is an essential element in the tales of what I have termed ecological fairies." The fairies in War for the Oaks are certainly closely tied to “one beloved place”, the preservation of which is their ultimate goal—but the place which they inhabit and defend is not a pristine forest, a rugged hill or a blooming meadow, but the modern city of Minneapolis. Nevertheless, like Evans’ ecological fairies, Bull’s fairies, too, are closely associated with “natural” features. Cities, Stefan Ekman (2013) argues, are “among the most interesting, and certainly the most distinct, interfaces between nature and culture”; and Leo Mellor (2014) points out that “wilderness can be found in the overlooked cracks in city-life." In War for the Oaks, Bull uses her fairies to call attention to the presence of the natural within the urban, designating as their dominion “every natural thing in this place." Embracing a broad definition of nature—the natural/magical sites of the novel include a naturally occurring waterfall as well as a park greenhouse, and even a modernist fountain—War for the Oaks moreover denies any rigid division between culture and nature. Instead, it presents a portrait of Minneapolis, infused with nature and magic, in which the modern city almost becomes a living organism in itself.