(From Booklist)
Gr. 6-9. Ben, a 16-year-old prone to coarse language and angry outbursts, has had a rough time: his mother died of cancer, and his long-absent father has taken him abroad to England for "a clean start." As it turns out, though, their cottage isn't exactly conducive to healing. Wyliff, a bark-and-leaf shrouded Green Man who lives in the surrounding woods, needs Ben to intervene in a fairy-world dispute that puts human lives in danger. The conventional premise may work best with younger fantasy readers, whose more limited experience of the genre will mute the cliched aspects of Ben's victory--particularly evident in his utterly sarcasm-free embrace of Wyliff's vague advice to "look inside [himself]." Still, many readers--at least, those who can get beyond the ambiguous cover image--will appreciate Ghan's twisted, goth-punk vision of fairyland, and identify with the bewilderment of a teen who recognizes that "a new reality was forming around him in which everything was connecting, but which he had yet to understand." Jennifer Mattson