January 29: Beauty and the Werewolf by Mercedes Lackey. Last of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, alas. I love it that the protagonist and the love interest are friends long before there’s a romance. But the villain is so blatant that I thought for a while that he’d turn out to be a good guy after all — should have known that Mercedes Lackey is seldom that subtle, and fairy tales (the Tradition!) aren’t subtle at all. He reminds me of Paul from The Fire Rose, though fortunately not quite that disgusting.
January 26: The Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey. I think I inadvertently skipped this Five Hundred Kingdoms book last time, because I didn’t remember a single thing about it! Nice to have a completely new one, and a very good one (possibly the best) at that!
January 26: Canon review for worldbuildingex: The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah. Here’s the story.
January 23: The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey. Next in the Five Hundred Kingdoms binge. It’s much slower than the others, perhaps because it’s less fluffy, but I like it a lot better than the Andersen fairy tale it’s based on. (After the first few chapters; I’m glad I read on.) The ending is tears-of-joy happy on all counts. Lackey is the queen of cultural appropriation, and I’m having Thoughts, but not coherent enough to say anything relevant in a separate blog post.
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