Book Review: Order of Swans

Title: Order of Swans

Author: Jude Deveraux 

Date: 2025

Publisher: Harlequin

ISBN: 978--7783-6842-7

Quote: "Kaley had joined every ancestry site...on each one, her ancestry had come back partially as "unknown.""

That's because her real ancestors came from the alternate universe from which our fairy tales come. Kaley lost her mother long ago. Her best friend, who was also her mother's husband, has been preparing her to go back to her home world. The story of her adventures there isn't like the predictable romances we associate with Harlequin; it's a lively adventure story that mashes up elements from fairy tales and does not focus on the protagonist's physical attraction to one man. 

With a little help from new friends of various species, Kaley learns how to use magical healing feathers and saves a tribe whose men and women have been separated by an oppressive royal order, and more.

Skillful, successful author. Well told tale. And, yes, there's a fiction-proportionate probability of happily-ever-after when Kaley chooses a mate at the end. This book is not what Deveraux usually writes or what Harlequin usually publishes, but fans of the author and/or the publisher should enjoy this little variation on their usual offerings.

Friday's Book Review: The Wedding

 Title: The Wedding

Author: Ella Walker Henderson

Date: 2023

Publisher: Ella Walker Henderson

Quote: "I look forward to our joint libraries."

For all who read "The Lady or the Tiger" and liked imagining themselves to be the hot-blooded barbarian princess, here is the opening story in a series about hot-blooded barbarian princesses whose kingdoms are at war. 

Each of these fantasy kingdoms has its "legendaries" who excel at a feat that symbolizes their kingdom isn some way. Jessamine is a princess of a tribe identified with fire; her father's throne room is protected by flames and specially "flameproof" servants. As a princess she's prepared to make a formal marriage for the good of the kingdom, but she's glad to turn down the apparently stupid prince of a tribe further south and take a more scholarly aristocrat from a tribe further north. 

There's not much plot in this "prequel" volume. Jessamine has never thought blue-eyed blonds were attractive but, after the betrothal is announced, she begins to bond with her bridegroom as a friend and decides she likes his face after all. 

And she's involved in a plot to take control of his kingdom. And war with those people further south whose prince she's rejected, whose "legendaries" ride fast horses, can't be far behind.

Ah, the life of a barbarian princess. If it appeals to you, at least as a fantasy in a series of books you can always lay down when you feel like takng a shower or mingling freely with people you trust, this series is for you.