Mother Goose was never like this

[bibliogramma]

Fortune’s Fool, Mercedes Lackey

In this, the third of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, Lackey draws on Russian, Arabian and Japanese folklore for another delightful retelling of old tales with a new and somewhat subversive twist. Several old friends reappear, including the dragons from volume two.

This time, there are two protagonists – Ekaterina (Katya) the seventh daughter of the King of the Sea, and Sasha, the seventh son of the King of Belarus. This being a faerie land, and Tradition being what it is, both the seventh daughter and the seventh son have unusual powers, which their respective parents have put to great use. Katya, like all underwater people, has magical power, and she also has the much rarer ability to transform instantaneously from water-breather to air-breather, and she is quite happy putting her talents to use as her father’s eyes and ears – observer, spy, and agent – both at home and in other kingdoms. Sasha, meanwhile is not only the seventh son, but a Fortune Fool and one born with the gift of influencing the workings of Tradition through his music. His job in his father’s court is to play the fool while subtly easing tensions and manipulating people and events in to bring about good fortune; outside the court, he uses his abilities to manipulate Tradition itself so that the country experiences the best possible consequences of those kinds of situations that can call Tradition into play.

Because this is, after all, a faerie tale (to say nothing of a series written for a SFF imprint of a publisher specialising in romance novels), Sasha and Katya meet one day during the performance of their respective duties, and end up, after various trials and tribulations, happily in love (that’s hardly a spoiler, I think). What is fun is how they get through those trials and tribulations. Sasha is not your typical hero – rather, he’s a truly good man who gets out of trouble by being polite, thoughtful, honest, observant, honourable and diplomatic; three cheers for a hero who doesn’t suffer from testosterone poisoning! Meanwhile, Katya is quite capable of defending herself in tight quarters, and even though the major plotline takes the form of the all-too-familiar “evil creature kidnaps beautiful maidens and hero leads the mission to rescue them” trope, these maidens are well on their way to extricating themselves by the time the rescue party arrives, and the final confrontation requires the efforts of both captives and rescuers to succeed.

It’s light and fluffy, to be sure, but Fortune’s Fool, like the earlier volumes in the series, playfully challenges the conventions of the faerie tales I knew as a child, and that’s a good thing.