The Sleeping Beauty – Mercedes Lackey

Did I mention a novel with nods towards a fairy tale? Well, this is a fairy tale with nods to novels I guess.  It was meant to be tongue in cheek and a bit silly. I kept thinking of the Shrek movies while reading it.

The interesting twist is that there’s a metaphysical force that wants these people to live out fairy tale archetypes, and that they are aware of it and try to fight their way through to something that really does let them live happily ever after.

Fairly cute.

The Serpent’s Shadow – Mercedes Lackey

The Serpent’s Shadow is the first of what has become Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Mages series.

There is a faint nod to the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, but just as an echo.

This book is not terribly strong on its own as a novel, but it describes some of the mechanisms of magic in this world.  If you really enjoyed the other ones, you would like this. But otherwise, don’t rush to read it.  The Wizard of London is a better character-driven introduction to this world.

The main character is Maya Witherspoon, whose mother was an Indian Brahmin magic-wielder and her father in the British Army. I was never clear whether he had any magic power. Anyhow, they are both dead, and Maya ‘flees’ to England to practice as a surgeon.

The surgery aspects are the better part of the book.

The Wizard of London – Mercedes Lackey

This book establishes some of the back story for the Elemental Mages series.  There is a mismatched pair of girls with special powers and a man and wife who run a school for such gifted children.  On the dark side, there is the wizard of London, and the nasty ice-mage who is drawing him further towards Evil… no, she decides to take him over completely!

This particular installment is not much more substantial than cotton candy.

Reserved for the Cat – Mercedes Lackey

Image via Wikipedia

Reserved for the Cat is the latest of Mercedes’ Elemental Masters series… though I’d not come across any of the earlier ones.  It worked out OK as an entry point, because the main character is an outsider to the whole culture of British magicians and elemental mages.  Our heroine is a young ballerina, whose unexpected success as understudy in the Paris ballet turns into the end of her French ballet career.

So her talking cat convinces her to decamp to England.  The cat arranges a lovely Puss-in-boots backstory for her, and gets her a starring role in a new dance-hall production.

This is sweet and fun, but hardly litra-chair.  Solid escapism.