Princess Emma travels with her promised-to-be-betrothed Prince Eadric to his family’s kingdom. They want his parents’ blessing before becoming officially engaged. The visit is a trial to Emma, who must avoid using her magic because Eadric’s family- and everyone who lives in that area- have deep distrust and fear of witches. She faces prejudice and nasty looks at every turn. But a new venture opens up immediately, when they find out that Eadric’s brother has been kidnapped by trolls. Emma and Eadric set off to rescue him. It’s dangerous and risky, of course, but they have each other, plus the help of Emma’s animal friends, a nice bat and an annoying crab. All this time Emma, of course, has been using magic secretly even though she had promised not to- similar to how she kept trying to influence events in the past in the last book, when she wasn’t supposed to. Partway through the journey she suddenly has a very concrete reason not to use any magic at all, as it puts their lives in danger. Her prince isn’t at all fazed by this, though she is often flustered at having to figure out how to solve problems and do things that would have been easily avoided or got around with magic. That alone gave her character some growth. When they finally reach the troll’s underground tunnels there are quite a few surprises. Not the least, that the younger prince is obnoxious, rude, and completely lacking in tact. He enjoys saying things that make people feel uncomfortable. Acts sweet and well-behaved around his mother who completely dotes on him. Nobody else can stand him. (Not even the trolls at this point!) So when they finally get home, Emma puts a spell on the young prince so that he can’t go more than five feet away from his mother. Pretty soon they are both tired of each other! That made me laugh.

I got tired of this series near the end of the book, though. Not just the uneven pacing and continual lack of descriptions but well, it was just a little boring. I’m ready to read something else, maybe I will come back and finish up the last three later. I did like the trolls, they were interesting because so different and awkwardly stupid (but very strong and resilient, so the dumb things they did were dangerous). There was a scene with cockatrices in it, a mythical creature I haven’t seen featured in fantasy books very often, and it made me think of The Dun Cow which I ought to read again. But all the wedding stuff at the end of the story felt very rushed (as it obviously did to the characters too), and Eadric’s parents’ acceptance of Emma seemed a bit sudden, even though she did save their younger son and then their whole castle from a troll invasion- and that’s when I started getting tired of reading it.

Borrowed from the public library.

Previous book in the series.

Third in the Frog Princess series. Emma is in love with Prince Eadric, but feels that she can’t marry him because of a family curse. Girls or women in her family who touch a flower after turning sixteen, become ugly and nasty in temperament. It’s a curse laid on them because an ancestor offended a fairy, reputedly at a long-ago party. Emma of course wants to break the curse, but to do that she has to know exactly what it said (in this fantasy universe, all curses have instructions on how to break them in the curse, or it won’t function properly. It’s one of the magic rules. I like that there are rules for how the magic works). She can’t find the information in old books, so she decides to travel back in time and observe the curse happening. Of course then she gets way too involved with events. She’s been warned not to do anything that would change the past (and affect the future), but can’t helping thinking that if she prevents the curse from ever happening, things would be so much better. She had wanted to go alone on this venture, but Eadric insists on coming along, and so does Li’l the bat. When she first arrives in the past, she’s of course surprised to see how things are different- from what people wear, to the shape of the building (it was smaller back then), to customs and attitudes. An even bigger surprise is how different her ancestors are, from what she’d expected. Quite a few people she thought would be nice, or at least honorable, are exactly the opposite. Downright unpleasant, petty and mean. She makes some new friends though, and while trying to hide her identity and blend in, also attempts to thwart the curse and protect certain people from harm. Lots of unexpected things happen, which adds to the lively humor in the story. She and Eadric have to face harpies and a dragon among other challenges, and the Prince participates in a jousting tournament. The dragon scene was one of the better parts of the book. Li’l the bat falls in love, and we get introduced to the vampire who appears later in the series.

It was fun, but also left me somewhat disappointed. Aside from the slightly awkward writing style that doesn’t quite sit well with me (things I want described often aren’t, transitions between scenes can be abrupt or not make sense), I felt like the time travel part of the story (which was most of it) was really lacking in some areas. The main character fit in far too easily in my opinion- she went back not just decades, but centuries. People noticed her clothing was strange at first, but other than that she had no problems. I think there would have been a lot more awkwardness and miscommunication with language and gestures and other cultural things having changed so much. Earlier in the book (and at the end) there were some scenes with Haywood, who used to be an otter- and he remarked how difficult it was to adjust to being human, after having lived as an animal for so many years. But there was no indication of that. I would have found it far more interesting to see a man who acted like an otter, or behaved oddly in other ways because of that, but he just said it was hard, nothing shown. Or it was so minimal in the narrative that I missed it. I know the age group for this book probably won’t notice such details being left out, but it felt like a missed opportunity to me.

Borrowed from the public library.

Sequel to The Frog Princess. It picks up literally right where the previous book left off- Emma and Eadric are happily back in her castle having breakfast with her aunt Grassina, very relieved to not be frogs anymore. They quickly find out that their troubles aren’t over- Grassina is supposed to be using her magic to help protect the kingdom from enemies, but is highly distracted by the plight of her beloved Haywood, who remains in otter form. Emma determines to help Grassina turn him back into a man- but they have to find some rare objects to do so. She and Eadric set off on a quest to find the required objects, facing all kinds of challenges and dangers, from underwater adventures to crawling into dragon’s caves. They meet quite a few new magical creatures along the way, and yes the story did start to answer a lot of questions I had from reading book eight first. I found out why the witches were all on a tropical island, for example. And why Emma’s grandmother has such a nasty temperament. Oh, and they discover that they still change back into frogs if Emma sneezes– which always seems to happen at the worst possible moment. But it was nice to see Emma’s grasp over her magic abilities improving, though that took a huge leap near the end of the story, by something out of her quite control (so it seemed rather unfair, as she didn’t earn it by working at it, and it also suddenly landed her with more responsibilities than she wanted).

The narrative moves pretty quickly, has lots of humor and clever little twists. I liked how it tied in a bunch of fairy tale tropes or well-known characters in, but with a unique slant. There were lots of things in the story that I saw coming from a mile away, long before the characters realized what was actually going on, however that was funny instead of exasperating. There were parts of this book that still threw me momentarily by lacking good descriptions or transitions between scenes, but it wasn’t nearly as noticeable as in Prince Among Frogs. It was overall quite fun, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

Borrowed from the public library.