The Accidental Highwayman: Being the Tale of Kit Bristol, His Horse Midnight, a Mysterious Princess, and Sundry Magical Persons Besides.

Tripp, Ben. The Accidental Highwayman: Being the Tale of Kit Bristol, His Horse Midnight, a Mysterious Princess, and Sundry Magical Persons Besides. 2014. 304p. ISBN 9780765335494. Available as an eBook on Overdrive.

Christopher “Kit” Bristol has led a hard life. A member of a traveling circus for a time, a rogue, and now a man servant, Kit considers himself lucky. After all, the teen has a roof over his head, food in his belly, and an indolent master who is away on business more often than not.

However, Kit’s life is about to change forever. When his master returns home late one night and makes a raucous in the kitchen, Kit awakens and finds him sitting at the table, wearing dark clothes and an obvious bleeding wound. His master has been shot! Suddenly, the legend of Whistling Jack, a highway robber, becomes true as Kit stands before Jack himself. With pursuers chasing Jack and at the door of his master’s estate, Kit decides to waylay them by making them think that Whistling Jack is still very much up and around, so he dresses up like his master, and rides Midnight, his master’s horse, throughout the countryside whereupon he is chased by other bandits.

Returning home, he finds his master dead, but he took the time to write his will before his passing. Unfortunately, his will is a map. He follows the map’s direction but he is ambushed by goblins. He meets an old witch who advises Kit that he must complete his master’s mission as he is bound by the same oath since he donned the highwayman’s costume. Kit must rescue Princess Morgana, a fairy, from being delivered to King George III of England. Her father, the Fairy King, has betrothed her to George’s son to cement an alliance between the fairy world and the world of humans.

Kit manages to rescue the princess, but this turns out to be but the first step in leading a full-scale fairy rebellion against the old king. Armed with a will that changes and provides new images as old ones come to pass, Kit can only worry that the last image, the one that has not changed since the beginning of his adventure, is of him hanging by the neck in the gallows of the British Crown.

Hunted by a relentless Red Coat captain, pursued by the Fairy King’s minions, and sought out by the evil Red Duchess, Kit and Morgana must reach the Irish sea and escape across it before it is too late for either of them.

A fun and light fantasy tale where history meets fairies, this book will delight fans of A Book of Spirits and Thieves, which similarly takes place at the intersection of two worlds.