Sleeping Beauty (Rosa) is rescued by two princes. Godmother Lily comes to her rescue. The magic mirror comes to the Godmother's rescue. Mildly amusing twisted fairy tale.

re-read 9/24/2023 ( )

The Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey is a unique spin on the fairy tales Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

I've been binging a lot of fairy tale related content lately so this was just a natural fit. Fairy tales whisk you away to another land full of magic, lore and whimsy.

In this book, Rosamund is our leading Princess. She's a mix of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty! The Tradition is this giant magic spell that dictates how the fairy tales creatures' lives shall go. For example, there's always an Evil StepMother, and typically their parents must die, there must be tragedy in their life and there might be a true love's kiss somewhere along the way.

I personally thought this book was way longer than it needed to be. There were entire chapters that bored me and I wondered why they needed to be there. There is lots of story and description - Mercedes is amazing at that - but it wasn't the type of content that kept me interesting. Sometimes there was so much description that I felt like I lost the story itself. I would have liked more action, or romance, or thrills, or really anything other than describing the evil plan over and over and over and over and over. Additionally, I found that her writing style just didn't vibe with me like other authors. Regardless, the book was still fun and cool to read! It's just not my favourite style of writing.

The challenges the Princes went through to try to win Rosamund's hand seemed endless. It seemed like half the book was going over these challenges that didn't have much impact on the story. It was obvious who Rosa was going to end up with and who was going to be evil. Half of these challenges could have been eliminated and the story wouldn't have changed. I do like that there was friendship before romance, but it needed to have more of that than endless challenges and droning plans.

This book stands alone but is apparently apart of a series. I am curious to see if reading the other books makes this book easier to understand! Either way, I understood this book without any prior knowledge of the series.

Three out of five stars. ( )

A fun read, and a great take on several fairytales that have sleeping princesses in them. ( )

Fun read

A fun, interesting take on the fairy tale. Good enough so will probably try a few others. ( )

The godmother of the kingdom Eltaria, Lily, has been the Fairy Godmother there for about 300 years. Rosa is the current princess, and The Tradition is trying to morph Rosa’s life into a fairy tale (and mixing the fairy tales up in the process). When Rosa’s mother dies, Lily convinces Rosa’s father that he and Lily should marry in order to keep the kingdom safe. To keep up appearances for The Tradition, Lily acts as the Evil Stepmother to Rosa, particularly after the King dies.

At this point, in order to protect the small, but rich, kingdom from invaders, Lily (aka Queen Sable) invites princes from the neighbouring kingdoms to come vie for Rosa’s hand. To do this, Lily and Rosa (with the help of Lily’s magic mirror) come up with “trials” for the princes to compete in. One of the princes (in actual fact, a Hero), Siegfried is big and more of a fighter than anything, but there’s more to him than meets the eye. Also competing are Siegfried’s new friend Leopold and the charming and handsome Desmond.

I really enjoyed this, especially from about half-way through (maybe a bit earlier) when the trials began. The trials were fun. I also loved Siegfried, who has a wonderful way with animals. He also added some great humour into the book. Rosa and Lily were strong, tough women, which I also really liked. ( )