This is Book One of The Adventures of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles; I
picked it up for my daughter who’s been looking for another good series to
read. She’s been on a Tamora Pierce kick for so long she’s just about worn
the books out from reading. But, of course, I had to see what they were
about too, especially since I’ve seen Wrede’s name several places and heard
her mentioned as a good writer. And now I have to go get more of them and
not for my daughter either. Ha, that’ll teach me.

The book starts out like a fractured fairy tale. A princess, Princess
Cimorene, is not the typical princess. She hates clothes, hates all the
dancing lessons, hates to embroider and mostly doesn’t want to marry any of
the incredibly stupid princes she’s met. She wants to learn fencing and
cooking and Latin and magic which just isn’t done when you are a princess.
So she runs away and becomes a volunteer “princess held captive by a
dragon,” except she loves it. The dragon actually wants her to learn Latin
so she can help sort out and catalog the library. She has to learn a little
magic too which she gets from learning Latin so she can read the spell books
and she gets to try out recipes when she does all the cooking for the
household. It’s perfect; she’s busy and useful and doesn’t have to worry
about what she wears.

There is some conflict in the story, mostly involving wizards and princes
who keep trying to rescue her while she keeps shooing them away so she can
get on with her work. But what is entertaining is the way Princess Cimorene
uses logic and common sense to blow holes in all the inflated notions of
what is Done and what is Proper.

I enjoyed it. I laughed at parts and wondered where Wrede was going with the
story at times and then watched as she used common sense and logic to get
her princess out of the mess she is in. I’m hoping she can keep up the
momentum and tempo in the following books. Now I have to go to the bookstore
and find them.