Some authors are masters of worldbuilding and Joanne M. Harris continues her reign as one them. Like the ever-present honeybees who buzz through her fantasy hybrid novel through stories, Honeycomb, carrying stories from world to world, protecting the Honeycomb Queen and her son, the Lacewing King, Harris constructs a magical universe, called the Nine Worlds and ruled by the insect-like Fae Silken Folk, as intricate as the beehives internal lives and delicate hexagonal walls. As if each small room of the hive contains a small story, Honeycomb is comprised of mostly two-to-three page stories that begin as if wholly separate beings and as the book continues on, we see a cast of complicated, beautiful, and terrible recurring characters, all centering around the Lacewing King as we follow him on his adventures and his own complicated emotional maturity throughout his life of near immortality. Amplifying the book’s magic even more are the illustrations of Charles Vess, who never ceases to delight fantasy lovers with his whimsical, flowing art.