Monday, December 28, 2009

One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey (2006)

Found this delightful fantasy book on my "not read" shelf. It is a great twist on various fairy tales and other fantasy books. Princess Andromeda or Andrea is a book lover and has a nasty mother the Queen, who just wants her out of the way. Her best friends are the guards. She finally get's her mother's notice by writing an astute report on the foreign merchants coming into their port, one of the few sources of income for the small kingdom. So Andrea gets her own household and duties, but when a dragon starts endangering the kingdom, virgins need to be sacrificed, and Andrea becomes one of them, but is saved by her Champion George.

I don't want to say more, because I don't want to spoil this for anyone else, but it is delightfully full of strong women characters, and nicely incorporates fantasy creatures like dragons and unicorns (a surprising twist to those.) The main "force" in this world is Tradition (i.e. fairy tales), so if you can align yourself with the right flow of underdogs and champions, you can win. Many great references to tales of all sorts - and of course, it is the book lover that knows the most or can find them.

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