Fantasy books, stories, ＆c

Loved this series growing up - definitely formative and probably part of my gateway into fantasy. On this vein, I can also recommend the Song of the Lioness by Tamara Pierce.

I haven't read the new book that you've mentioned but will check it out!

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Patricia C. Wrede’s middle-grade novels are the kind of books that I can best describe as “formative.” You encounter them when you’re 8 or 9 or 10, fall madly in love with their no-nonsense wit and warm charm, and then use them as the basis of your personality for months after reading them.

It features a group of unconventional fairy tale characters (a princess, a king, a witch, and an adventuring boy) who face the whimsy and chaos of their magical land with determined practicality.

Wrede writes, always, in celebration of practicality, of common sense, of everyday domestic virtues like having good manners and keeping a clean house.

Morwen lives in a cottage in the woods surrounded by cats, with a sign above her door instructing visitors that she’ll have “none of this nonsense, please,” and an apple tree which she has arranged to always be in fruit.

Her plotline pokes sly fun at the problem of conventional femininity: Alianora fits the mold in a way Cimorene chooses not to, but her family still won’t consider her a proper woman because they don’t think she’s suffered enough.

The joy of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles is that they argue for us to make our own ways forward with grace and dignity and common sense, plus copious warnings to always be polite when you’re talking to dragons.

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Pat Wrede was a regular on rec.arts.sf.composition back in the day. I can't say that I know her, exactly, but I know a little about her.

As for her writing, it's irregular in quality. She's had a long career as a mostly-midlist author, and some of her early stuff—Caught in Crystal and the other Lyra books—isn't very good. The Enchanted Forest chronicles are excellent, though, as you've already discovered. Mairelon the Magician and its sequel, Magician's Ward, are decent (was published under an adult imprint, but I don't recall it containing anything too heavy). I know I've read Sorcery and Cecelia and The Seven Towers, but I remember nothing about them. Haven't read the new book.

Her full bibliography is here.