This book is considerably later in time since The Fairy Godmother. Elena is now a senior Fairy Godmother, and has multiple Kingdoms under control. When I looked this up on Mercedes Lackey’s website to check the spelling of Aleksia’s name, I discovered this is actually the 4th book in the Five Hundred Kingdom’s series, when I have been rereading them as this being the 3rd book. Nevertheless, it didn’t have a huge impact on my enjoyment because it doesn’t depend on any characters from Fortune’s Fool.
There is a section where two people are attacked by bandits, and it is briefly described how they get out of the situation and gain from it. A couple of pages later after swapping view points, this is repeated and expanded upon. It wasn’t far enough away in the text hat I felt that the repetition was warranted.
Other parts of the novel didn’t connect. No matter how many times I reread this, I can never remember which of the two men with Veikkio Aleksia is interested. I can understand using different sounding names to emphasis that this is taking part in another part of the world, but it’s annoying to keep track of.
I loved the concept of the Runes foretelling what a person is good at for the Sammi. For such a practical people, I couldn’t understand how their afterlife could be so boring though! I would like to see more stories about them, because the end of this book didn’t feel finished for Aleksia at all. I wanted to know more about how she would bring more friendly people (not just children!) to her castle.
Recommended for adults and teenagers as there are no ‘sex scenes’, only a great story! Highly enjoyable, even if I feel that is isn’t quite as good as the others in the series. There are more new fairytales from other parts of the world that European readers may not be familiar with which adds an extra level of interest.
