Book of Enchantments by Patricia C. Wrede

P.182 'A lifetime can be two days long it needs only a birth at the beginning and a death at the end.' P.112 'Approve? My lord, I am a mercenary. 'But giving the girl away without telling her? He acts as if she were a pet dog or a camel!' The other gods agreed. 'Bad enough that he presumes we'd want her,' grumbled Welenen the Rain-Bringer. But the gods were angry at him, because he had never asked his daughter whether she agreed to his plan.

He worked for a week to get everything right. The wizard made his preparations and cast his spells.

'For,' he thought, 'not only will I be as rich and famous as anyone could desire, I will also get my Ryvenna a husband worthy of her beauty.' 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.P.2-3 The wizard decided to call on the gods and offer his daughter in marriage to whichever one would promise to make him so rich and so famous that he would never be forgotten as long as people lived around the Sea of Luck. 10+) - Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. A thoughtful author's note answers the perennial question ``Where do you get your ideas?'' and closes out this varied and satisfying collection. ``Roses by Moonlight'' examines human nature and, along with ``The Lorelei,'' starts off with a contemporary setting that intersects with the ancient world of magic. ``Stronger than Time'' is a wonderfully spooky Sleeping Beauty story, and ``Cruel Sisters'' imagines the complex psychological relationships behind the lyrics of an old song, in which a magic harp sings of one sister's drowning another. Other pieces dig deeper into the eerie world of magic and the imagination. The last story in particular, ``Utensile Strength,'' involves familiar characters from Wrede's series and features a rousing ``bake-off'' for knights, with the recipe for the winning entry included. Though mostly unrelated to the novels, stories such as ``The Princess, the Cat, and the Unicorn'' and ``The Sixty-two Curses of Caliph Arenschadd'' carry on the unconventional princess theme.

A collection of magical short stories by an author best known for her humorous Enchanted Forest Chronicles, in which spunky young heroines turn the knight-in-shining-armordamsel-in-distress paradigm on its head.

Book of Enchantments by Patricia C. Wrede