Another fairy tale retelling, this one is set in Elizabethan England, in a town not too far from London, where the Widow Arden lives with her two pretty daughters, Blanche and Rosamund. Mrs. Arden is a wise woman, who has taught her daughters some of her healing arts. Sometimes the girls have to cross the invisible border to the realm of Faerie to collect more unusual herbs and plants. John Dee, famous occultist and astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, also lives in town. The book is set in the 1580s, when Dee was working with Edward Kelley and experimenting with alchemy and investigations into the paranormal.
As well as the widow and her daughters, and John Dee and Edward Kelley, the major players are the Queen of Faerie’s two half-mortal sons. Hugh, the eldest, is quite content to stay put with his mother and her subjects, having pretty much forsaken his human side. His younger brother John, who was actually baptised as a baby, is much more restless, and feels compelled to return to the mortal realm, but returns home around Halloween and May Day. Some of the fairies at the court are displeased by the close connection between the Faerie and human world, and are hatching a plot to get rid of John. They manage to manipulate a spell Dee and Kelley are casting, but something goes wrong, and Hugh is hit instead. Soon he is turning into a giant bear, and his mother has no choice but to expel him from Faerie. John promises not to rest until he has restored his brother. More on my blog.
The Mislaid Magician is the third book in a young adult series about cousins Cecilia (or Cecy) and Kate, who live in an alternate Regency England where some people have magical powers. Over the course of the first two books, they meet their husbands, go on a Grand Tour of Europe, and solve various mysteries that are magical in nature. If you want to be entirely unspoiled with regards to whom the young ladies end up with, you might want to avoid this review. The book works fine if you haven’t read the other books too, it’s been nearly a decade since I read the first two, and I had no trouble following the plot.
Cannonball Read V 