Review: The Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I really enjoy the ways that Lackey finds to mash up fairytales and come out with a unique tale that works. I love the idea that fairytales are forced on people's lives by the Tradition and the Fairy Godmothers' job is to harness the extra magic and save people from their less desirable fates by forcing the nicer Traditional paths wherever they can. It lets you laugh at the traditional tales and enjoy the magical wonder of them without simply repeating what's been done before. This series is really humorous high fantasy set in a world where fairytales are a danger to people leading their ordinarily magical lives.

I turn to these books when I need something light and entertaining and that doesn't take itself seriously. As with the previous books in the series, Sleeping Beauty was what I needed - humorous, tongue-in-cheek, fluffy, and really quite silly. This might have been one of the sillier ones, in fact. I loved it for that.

It was more of a hodgepodge than the others so far, with an entire magical kingdom full to the brim with Traditional magic. It's not really a Sleeping Beauty tale, although there are bits and pieces of it in there. It's a mish-mash full of Heroes, challenges for the hand of a princess, seven dwarves, a huntsman, dragons, curses, unicorns, talking animals… the list goes on. How the Godmother Lily manages it all is a feat indeed.

There is a sweet romance, but it is not really the focus even though the goal is to win the hand of the princess. I saw another reviewer mention that the story focused more on developing a bromance, and I agree. It was more about the friendship between two of the suitors and the scheming of the Godmother than about the princess herself. It's also a romance without any explicit scenes, which I am thankful for since the first book in the series was a bit more detailed than what I usually like to read.

I do have to mention that in spite of all these magical events, it was still a bit slow in places. And although I found the hodgepodge of fairytales amusing, they made it feel choppy at times. Some of the solutions were a little too coincidental, because you can always throw in another part of a fairytale to fill a need that arises. Not that this prevented me from being entertained, but it's not for everyone.



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