5. Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey

Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey
ISBN: 0373802455
Luna, New York, 2004
479 pages
Adult Crossover

Teaser: Elena is not your typical Cinderella! Fed up with being an unpaid servant for her stepmother and stepsisters, she packs her things and sets out to the hiring fair, having decided that if she is going to be a maid, she will darn well get paid! To her surprise, she turns out to have a fairy godmother, who shows up with an unusual offer.

Summary: Elena lives in one of the 500 kingdoms, a group of kingdoms governed by "the Tradition," a magical force that tries to steer events to match traditional paths. When her father married a woman with two daughters of her own, Elena's path was steered to the Cinderella storyline. Unfortunately, Elena's prince is ten years younger than she is. With the Tradition forcing more and more power into trying to make Elena's story turn into a Cinderella tale, Elena's fairy godmother steps in to offer Elena a choice. Her godmother can drain off the excess magic, leaving Elena a perfectly ordinary young woman, and find Elena a good position in a nice household. Or, Elena can become the fairy godmother's apprentice, and learn to use her magic to guide the Tradition. The Tradition favors tragedy just as much as happy endings, so fairy godmothers work to push the path of the Tradition towards good endings. They also work to thwart evil magicians, help heroes, and when needed, drain the extra magic from those the Tradition is trying to force down impossible paths. Elena accepts, and with that, she is on her way to becoming a fairy godmother.

Evaluation: This was a delightful twist on the Cinderella story. Elena starts out with a strong backbone, and goes from there. Good versus evil and virtue versus vice are all major themes. Many of the Grimm fairy tales or fairy tale devices are present, as are other fairy tale standbys. Twists are also present, and the combination of familiar devices used in different ways works wonderfully. At one point the christening gone wrong tradition that leads to a briar rose type curse is foiled when the evil sorceress is set up with a gloomy former frog prince turned poet. The poor prince had been a frog so long that the throne had defaulted to the next in line. Then he was kissed by a princess who was unfortunately a six year old who was going through a kissing everything in sight phase. The sorceress and the prince get a bit of a push from the tradition and fall in love within the first hour of talking. With some of her bitterness already fading, the sorceress curses the princess, but only to wake on the morning of her sixteenth birthday with tangled hair. The sorceress later becomes a reformed sorceress, and while she keeps the gloomy look of her castle, she and her husband, the former frog prince, help Elena by acting as the 'evil' sorceress called for in many Traditional Quests. Twists such as this and other quirky takes on old standbys are plentiful in this tale. The story flows well, and while it is not written as a teen book, I think teens will still enjoy it.

Challenge issues and age recommendation: Elena is a fairy godmother, and the magic aspect might draw protest from some. Other than that, there are mentions of the bawdier aspects of some tales, mainly related to not-so-chivalrous knights/princes, and the grislier aspects of some of the fairy tales, such as the one where bones of a murdered love are turned into a musical instrument that magically sing the truth about their murder when in the presence of the murderer. As this is an adult crossover, I'm going to play it safe and recommend this book for readers 15 and up.