About the Book
Title: The Sleeping Beauty
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Series: Five Hundred Kingdoms #5
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 352
Edition Read: Kindle eBook
Dates Read: August 1-8, 2024
Blurb: Heavy is the head—and the eyelids—of the princess who wears the crown…
In Rosamund’s realm, happiness hinges on a few simple
For every princess there’s a prince.
The king has ultimate power.
Stepmothers should never be trusted.
And bad things come to those who break with Tradition….
But when Rosa is pursued by a murderous huntsman and then captured by dwarves, her beliefs go up in smoke. Determined to escape and save her kingdom from imminent invasion, she agrees to become the guinea pig in one of her stepmother’s risky incantations—thus falling into a deep, deep sleep.
When awakened by a touchy-feely stranger, Rosa must choose between Tradition and her future…between a host of eligible princes and a handsome, fair-haired outsider. And learn the difference between being a princess and ruling as a queen.
The moral of the story? Sometimes a princess has to create her own happy endings….
Review
This book was so delightful! I know I said in my review of The Snow Queen that this series has been a bit hit-and-miss for me, but this one was definitely a hit.
One of the things that’s so fun about the Five Hundred Kingdoms books is that it takes fairy tales, smushes them together, and then turn them on their heads. For example, this story sort of combines Sleeping Beauty with Snow White (and perhaps a few others, but those are the main two), but not in the ways you would expect. For example, Rosa does end up staying with seven dwarves, but they are not the nice, happy-go-lucky fellas that you normally see. They are mean and scruffy and keep her prisoner (they also might be working with the main villain, but I digress). For the Sleeping Beauty side, yes, Rosa falls into a magical sleep, but it’s because she chooses to do so in order to help things work out better in her favor, and also with the help of her realm’s Godmother.
That was another thing I liked about this one – Godmother Lily. The Godmothers are the ones that help to control the Tradition, the magical force that moves the people of this world to conform into a traditional fairy tale/storybook role. Sometimes the best way to do that is to trick it by giving the appearance of fitting into a story. When Rosa’s mother (aka the Queen) dies, in order to be able to keep up with the situation, Lily makes a deal with the King to become his new wife. While he knows her true identity, everyone else (including Rosa) thinks that she is just another noblewoman marrying into the family. What this does is trick the Tradition into accepting her as the “Evil Stepmother” when she is actually there to try and help Rosa.
It’s stuff like this that generally make these books so much fun, and I’m really only scratching the surface here. There’s also a competition to win Rosa’s hand, inviting all the princes from neighboring kingdoms – and the tasks in the competition get stranger and stranger so that Lily and Rosa can truly weed out the unsuitable suitors. Through this we get to meet Leopold, a very charismatic nobleman who was desperately trying to find a sleeping maiden in the woods to kiss, and Seigfried, a hero who desperately does NOT want to be a hero.
Overall, this book was a load of fun from beginning to end.
GoodReads rating: 4 stars
Categories: Books I've Read
Life With No Plot 
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