Read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge. Cazaril has escaped from slavery, and for refuge, seeks the safest place he can think of, the noble household where he served as a page when he was a boy. But once there, to his surprise, he’s named the secretary-tutor to the sister of the heir to […]
The Curse of Chalion – Lois McMaster Bujold Read More »
Read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge. This book combines three novellas of some sort of romantic fantasy. Rachel Lee’s ‘Drusilla’s Dream’ is a fun little little story that manages to combine a night shift data entry job with a good, old-fashioned quest by a princess to find the Behemoth that can save her
Charmed Destinies – Mercedes Lackey, Rachel Lee and Catherine Asaro Read More »
Read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge. Yeine’s mother had fled her life as the heir to the King of Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and gone north, where she had married Yeine’s father, ruler of the kingdom of Darr. Yeine had known little of her mother’s life, but when her mother mysteriously dies, Yeine is
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms – N. K. Jemisin Read More »
Read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge. Claire and Sydney are sisters – both members of the Waverley family, which means something in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Claire learned from their grandmother how to prepare dishes grown from the herbs in their garden, things like the honeysuckle wine they always bring to
Garden Spells – Sarah Addison Allen Read More »
Read for the Once Upon a Time Reading Challenge. These short stories take nine traditional fairy tales and translate them into modern day Los Angeles. The language is poetic, and still very much of the traditional fairy tale. This means that even though most of the tales are not supernatural, the writing keeps that fairy
The Rose and the Beast – Francesca Lia Black Read More »
Read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge. This is the story of a girl named Morgan, whose father was killed by a cruel king, who then took her mother away. Her mother was able to protect Morgan and her sister Morguase for a time, but after the death of the king, the girls were
I am Morgan le Fay – Nancy Springer Read More »
Read for the Once Upon a Time Reading Challenge. Tanaquil is the daughter of a sorceress, but seems to have no powers of her own. One day, she finds a cache of bones in the desert near her mother’s fortress, which she carefully reassembles, making a unicorn. And during a grand feast in the fortress,
The Black Unicorn – Tanith Lee Read More »
Read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge. Aza has the most beautiful voice in the kingdom of Ayortha, which is a good thing, because the one thing Ayorthians prize more than beauty is singing ability, and Aza isn’t winning any contests in the beauty department. She’s even figured out a way to throw her
Fairest – Gail Carson Levine Read More »
Read for the Once Upon a Time Reading Challenge. Believe it or not, I bought this book in hardcover, when it first came out. (That would be 2008.) And unlike every other Harry Potter book, I didn’t read it immediately. It’s been sitting on a shelf mocking me, so in the grand spirit of the
The Tales of Beedle the Bard – J. K. Rowling Read More »
Read for the Once Upon a Time Reading Challenge. Nepenthe is an orphan, raised in the Royal Library of Raine, and she’s become one of their best translators and scribes. One day, a young mage gives her a scroll that has so far defied translation – it’s a book written in an alphabet of thorns,
Alphabet of Thorn – Patricia A. McKillip Read More »
