Summary:
This is the fifth book in Mercedes Lackey’s series entitled the Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms. This book is defiantly one of my favorites in the series so far. In this Series Mercedes Lackey retells the classic fairy tales in New and different ways. In the land of the five hundred kingdoms the magical force called “the tradition” is the ruling force of people’s lives. This book follows the same formula that Mercedes Lackey has so beautifully set up in her past works. However this story was a clever mix of several tales with sleeping princesses. The kingdom of Eltaria has just lost its beloved queen and the tradition is building up around Princess Rosamund, the fairest in the land, and King Thurman to set in motion a traditional tale of a wicked stepmother. So Godmother Lilly must act fast and disguises herself as a wicked stepmother and marries the King but when the Huntsman attacks princess Rosamund and she goes missing Godmother Lilly must find her and tell her the truth about who Lilly is so that they can find a way to get around the tradition in one piece. However when two princes, Siegfried and Leopold, are thrown into the story with the tradition on their heels things get more heated. Now Lilly and Rosamund must find a way to satisfy the tradition and keep war from the kingdom so they invite princes from all over the 500 kingdoms to take part in test and trials for Rosamunds hand in marriage. During the trials the princes stay at Rosamunds castle and she begins to fall for Siegfried the Northlander who has some issues with the tradition of his own. Siegfried is running from his destiny because he is meant to wake up the sleeping shield maiden from inside a ring of fire. If he does wake the maiden who is actually Brunnhilde he will set into motion a story that ends in betrayal, tragedy, and the end of the gods. So when he falls in love with Rosamund and befriends Leopold they must all work together to satisfy the tradition and get the kingdom to safety. But a wrench is thrown in their plan when Rosamund is kidnapped and the group must find out who did it and where she is. Can they rescue the princess and stop war from coming to the kingdom of Eltaria in time for a happily ever after?
Review:
This is probably my favorite book in the series. This book was told from the point of view of Rosamund, Godmother Lilly, and Siegfried. This was done well and allowed us to closely bond with these characters and with some of the secondary characters by seeing them from more than one POV. I think that Mercedes Lackey did a wonderful job mixing the different stories of sleeping princesses. She managed to create a bond between all the players and make you enjoy each one. She ended the story with multiple happy endings for the different couples and I didn’t feel like any ends were left unknown but she also created the beginnings of new characters and storylines. This book also had me laughing out loud more than any of the others. My only real complaint is that I wasn’t familiar with the story of Siegfried and Brunnhilde before reading this story so at the end when Brunnhilde is yelling at her father I had no idea what she was talking about. More back ground information put into the story would have been much appreciated. However that said I think she did a wonderful job. There was Good dialogue, great characters, Action, Romance, and more. Over all I felt like this was a major step up from Ice Queen but had more characters that were loveable than The Fairy Godmother.
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