One Good Knight
Mercedes Lackey
Princess Andie is intelligent, waif-like beautiful and has just turned 19. Her mother however isn’t ready to see her as an adult, and would rather she was confused and silly with conventional beauty. When Andie finally gets a real ‘job’, she uncovers things that were probably better off hidden. Andie becomes a liability very quickly – as a virgin she’s very likely to be snaffled up by an evil creature…
Andie is smart, and bookish – just what I like in a female protagonist. She isn’t very good with common things, but her common sense is certainly in place. Yay for a non-traditional heir. Lackey has a good thing going, and she really works with it.
The different perspectives of this book, particularly the Queen vs Andie in the first parts of the book really set the plot going. Those that have read The Fairy Godmother in this series will recognise the Traditional path that is taking place, but Andie can’t see it. You just keep waiting for the penny to drop!So many good things to say about this book, but many of them would give away too much of the plot. It’s not a particularly hard read, but it will sucker you in and steal all of your time (oops to doing all that study I had lined up)
Andie’s knowledge of the Tradition, and also that of the other people in her Kingdom (such as Sophont Balen) seems strange, after the emphasis in The Fairy Godmother about most people having no idea. Yet everyone seems to be exploiting it easily! It’s nice to see how a situation can be resolved without a Fairy Godmother though – the regular people have a chance.
The cover of this book doesn’t match how I saw Andie at all. I though she was very thin with no breasts, and the girl on the cover certainly does have those! Also I expected that the dragon would be less fierce looking than that. Hard to discuss more without giving the plot away.