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2011 Book Review #90: The Sleeping Beauty
Title: The Sleeping Beauty
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Fractured-fairy tale romance
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: In the land of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, the magical weight of The Tradition pushes you into a proper fairy tale path whether you want it or not and it's up to the Godmothers to ensure as many tales end with actual happy endings as possible. So when a would-be Sleeping Beauty gets kidnapped by dwarves and not one but two princes (one of whom is trying to dodge his own Ring Cycle-style fate) show up, Eltarria's Godmother is going to have her hands full.
Thoughts: Lackey's been getting a lot of mileage out of fairy tales of late. Actually, she's been getting a lot of mileage, period--her publication schedule is pretty dense, and this one shares the minor continuity errors of several of her more recent books. It's not bad enough to be really annoying, but the books clearly have been written in some haste.
This is a very enjoyable featherweight tale with likeable, entertainingly pragmatic characters. In this series, fate in the form of The Tradition pushes people into acting out the stereotypes--princesses are supposed to be lovely but not necessarily very bright, stepmothers are always supposed to be wicked, and the hero and the maiden are supposed end up married, even if one is six years old and the other's gay. The fun is watching the characters--the dragon who would really rather take a nap than rampage, the warrior who knows perfectly well that kissing the sleeping Valkyrie will lead to glory and doom and has no interest in doom, the princess whose ex-shepherdess mother was no fool and taught her daughter how to cook and clean and sew as well as dance--try to wiggle around within the confines of the story to get to one of the endings they would actually enjoy.
There's not a huge amount of angst or tension here. But there is a lot of fun and some cleverness. The common sense approach to magic is trademark Lackey and still quite enjoyable. A brisk little romp with an appropriately happy ending.
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Fractured-fairy tale romance
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: In the land of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, the magical weight of The Tradition pushes you into a proper fairy tale path whether you want it or not and it's up to the Godmothers to ensure as many tales end with actual happy endings as possible. So when a would-be Sleeping Beauty gets kidnapped by dwarves and not one but two princes (one of whom is trying to dodge his own Ring Cycle-style fate) show up, Eltarria's Godmother is going to have her hands full.
Thoughts: Lackey's been getting a lot of mileage out of fairy tales of late. Actually, she's been getting a lot of mileage, period--her publication schedule is pretty dense, and this one shares the minor continuity errors of several of her more recent books. It's not bad enough to be really annoying, but the books clearly have been written in some haste.
This is a very enjoyable featherweight tale with likeable, entertainingly pragmatic characters. In this series, fate in the form of The Tradition pushes people into acting out the stereotypes--princesses are supposed to be lovely but not necessarily very bright, stepmothers are always supposed to be wicked, and the hero and the maiden are supposed end up married, even if one is six years old and the other's gay. The fun is watching the characters--the dragon who would really rather take a nap than rampage, the warrior who knows perfectly well that kissing the sleeping Valkyrie will lead to glory and doom and has no interest in doom, the princess whose ex-shepherdess mother was no fool and taught her daughter how to cook and clean and sew as well as dance--try to wiggle around within the confines of the story to get to one of the endings they would actually enjoy.
There's not a huge amount of angst or tension here. But there is a lot of fun and some cleverness. The common sense approach to magic is trademark Lackey and still quite enjoyable. A brisk little romp with an appropriately happy ending.