Review: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles [Boxed Set]

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles [Boxed Set] by Patricia C. Wrede
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

According to my Goodreads records, I had read all of these previously in 2012 - nearly 10 years ago, so I had largely forgotten them. I enjoyed the re-read.

They are firmly in the genre of fairy-tale retelling in which practically the whole of society apparently consists of royalty, with the odd knight, the very occasional steward or other upper servant, and maybe a farmer when the plot requires one, plus witches, wizards, sorceresses, non-human talking creatures of various kinds, and a very vaguely implied merchant class who never actually enter into the story. You needn't bother to think about the economic basis of all of this, where the food is coming from or who is paying the taxes that provide the king's income or even who makes the swords and jewellery. That's not what the story is about. It also consciously plays with tropes and characters out of fairy tales, with a bit of a spin, and also adds in a few original touches that fit into the world well enough.

The four books, while complete in themselves for the most part, do have an overall arc, and some characters recur across several books.

Cimorene, the protagonist of the first book, is exactly the kind of pragmatic, sensible, capable young woman I enjoy as a protagonist. She can't see the sense in conforming to what's expected if there's no actual good reason to do so, and so she volunteers to be a dragon's princess and then firmly sends away the knights and princes who try to rescue her. That, by itself, wouldn't be a plot, though; she discovers that the wizards are up to no good, and, by being courageous and level-headed and making good use of allies and resources, brings about a satisfactory conclusion.

The second book centres on the King of the Enchanted Forest, who joins forces with Cimorene to thwart the wizards' next gambit. Compared with Cimorene, he's not as vividly drawn, but he's courageous and determined and, importantly, open to considering Cimorene as an equal partner.

The third book's protagonist is Morwen, a witch who has nine cats (none of them black; she doesn't care for convention any more than Cimorene does). The author has given the cats distinct personalities, and conveyed them so successfully that I could remember clearly which was which and what they were like, which is something that a lot of authors can't manage with human characters. One thing I didn't particularly enjoy in this book; the magician character is given to explaining magic in somewhat complicated terms, and Cimorene, who has shown herself previously to be intelligent and well-read and capable with magic, has to keep asking Morwen for a plain-language translation. I suppose someone had to, as a reader proxy, but really the explanations aren't that complicated in their vocabulary for the most part, and it seemed out of character for Cimorene to be the one who didn't follow them.

The fourth book was actually the first to be written, as a standalone, though when you read them all together the first three books are very necessary backstory for it. Cimorene's son Daystar must go on a deliberately ill-defined quest, and he does so by meeting a series of obstacles and overcoming them largely through politeness (Cimorene has trained him to be almost comically polite) and firm perseverance, plus the help of people he meets along the way. He mostly doesn't solve difficult problems by intelligence, though he sometimes comes to correct conclusions when he needs to. I didn't feel that he had a lot of development as a character, nor was the plot as satisfying as in the other books. Daystar is too sensible to succumb to the usual temptations to leave the path that fairy-tale heroes are often faced with, and it means his quest is mostly linear.

This one-volume edition is worth having for the author's introductions, which talk about how and why she wrote the books.

Overall, recommended.

View all my reviews