Now Reading #20: Fortune’s Fool by Mercedes Lackey

OK, so this is not exactly literature. I did enjoy it though. It’s like book candy. I’ve said before that Mercedes Lackey is one to read if you want to be swept up into the romance of a story without having to really think about it, or follow the ever complicated relationships of Bronte, or Austen. Lackey creates an easy romance without talking down to the reader and without repeating herself ad nasuem.

This book is part of a whole series she has done called Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms. In these books, Lackey creates her own fairy tales by retelling and mashing up fairy tales from all over the world.Fortune’s Foolis based primarily on Russian folklore, but also contains characters from Japanese tales, English tales and even a Jinn from Arabic lore. It is all woven together rather beautifully and the result, if you’ll pardon the use, is fantastic.I particularly loved the kitsune and the mermaids, and of course the flying horse!

This book would be easy to pick up even outside the series, and for anyone who has or doesn’t have prior knowledge of Russian tales. I don’t know much about them, but the borrowed figures are described well enough that I could picture and understand them!

The end tied up a little quickly for me, and a little too neatly, but I think that’s just the case with books from the Luna House. Nothing complicated, but definitely a good summer romance read!