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.
