Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: pearls

  • The Princess and the Pearl

    The Princess and the Pearl

    For those young at heart who love fantasy and romance, this series of books has it all. It covers some original ideas which are enticing, such as Princess Annie’s ability to be untouched by magic, and her new husband’s method of travel which involves a post card. The gentle love story together with the terrible problem that Annie’s father suffers from (Blue feet), keep the story moving at a good speed.

     If the King with the blue feet is not helped, he will soon die, so it falls to Annie and her husband, Liam, to find a solution, and save the King. Liam has been told that he is ready to take over the crown from his own father, and wants to settle the illness issues so he can go back to his own lands to assume his rightful position as ruler of his lands.

     Many doctors come to Annie’s family castle, but none can help the sick men. Now the real adventures begin as the princess and her partner need to travel to the other side of the world to find a witch who lives at Skull Cove. This involves a long sea voyage again with many adventures along the way.

     The doctor is eventually located and again, much magic and trickery is used to persuade him to help the sickly royals. The characters in this novel are varied and interesting. Liam’s brother would do anything to harm him and is a most selfish and spoilt person. Liam’s stepmother is also quite wicked, but gets her just deserts in a very funny way.

     The combination of interesting characters, challenging problems and family ties makes for satisfying reading. Just as the other books in the series show the progress of the relationship between Liam and Annie, their lives and the lives of those around them, this book adds to the saga.

     Readers can speculate on the future of this wise and kindly couple, their dragon friends, and comrades.

  • Cinnamon

    Cinnamon

    Fables are amazing stories created not simply to entertain but also to deliver a life lesson to all ages, particularly children. Down thought the ages many have been told and moved into the history of the written word and in Cinnamon by the highly acclaimed author Neil Gaiman we have such a work, presented with a fresh new vision and designed to appeal to the children, and not so little ‘children’ in today’s fast moving world.

    In his usual slightly off beat style Gaimin creates a beautiful princess called Cinnamon, naturally all princesses are beautiful, and who lives in a very hot country with mountains on one side and jungle on the other.

    Cinnamon is much loved by her parents the Rajah and Rani. As her eyes are made of pearls and she will not talk her parents are very worried and so they offer a huge reward to anyone who can teach her how to talk. Many try but many fail until one day a huge, majestic, gloriously colourful tiger comes strolling out of the jungle saying that he will teach Cinnamon, or in his words the ‘girl-cub’, to talk.

    Of course they are all very afraid, especially when the tiger told the Rajah, who really was trying to be very brave, the he was most definitely a man eating tiger, but that they did not need to be frightened.

    The tiger and Cinnamon meet each other and so begins a very strange friendship as the tiger began to teach Cinnamon a lot about, life, trust and friendship.

    Beautifully illustrated by Divya Srinivasan this lovely fable will have a wide appeal from little ones beginning to discover their slightly bigger picture books to early readers and anyone who enjoys a really good tale embellished with beautiful illustrations.