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A portentous song sparks an unlikely adventure in this lighthearted contemporary fantasy by the Nebula Award-winning author of The Healer's War. Colin Songsmith sings a song to an old witch who takes an unlikely revenge. The witch's granddaughter rescues him from the dire threat of being eaten alive by the cat. She hears the song, which happens to concern her recently married sister and a gypsy. Convinced that she has to save her sister, she takes the minstrel, the cat, and her magical resources to Rowan Castle. The story is rich with descriptive details of setting and encounters with magical and fantastic creatures such as a talking cat, a lovesick dragon, and a bear prince. The characters speak in contemporary slang, which plays nicely against the traditional fantastic settings.… (more)
This is an enjoyable romp of a story. Maggie Brown is a witch who goes looking for her pretty, flighty sister who has run off with a Gypsy. Elizabeth Scarborough manages to fit in encounters with goblins, dragons, unicorns, Knights, princes and minstrels (and other fantasy regulars) without the story seeming rushed or stereotyped. Great fun and I look forward to reading more from this world. ( )
For Betty, Don, Monte, and Gladys Scarborough and Richard Gridley Kacsur and the pets who are my family. And for Dr. Martha Kowalski, who checked her own laboratory work while her office nurse was fighting dragons. Also for Jeannie Jett, Marion Watts, Allen Damron and Dr. Jeff Trilling, who not only believe in fantastic beasties and awesome enchantments, but believe in me as well.
First words
If it hadn't been for Maggie's magic, the eggs would have tumbled from the basket and shattered when the panting barmaid careened into her.
Quotations
Last words
Colin thought that nothing would be quite ordinary, ever again, for any of them.
A portentous song sparks an unlikely adventure in this lighthearted contemporary fantasy by the Nebula Award-winning author of The Healer's War. Colin Songsmith sings a song to an old witch who takes an unlikely revenge. The witch's granddaughter rescues him from the dire threat of being eaten alive by the cat. She hears the song, which happens to concern her recently married sister and a gypsy. Convinced that she has to save her sister, she takes the minstrel, the cat, and her magical resources to Rowan Castle. The story is rich with descriptive details of setting and encounters with magical and fantastic creatures such as a talking cat, a lovesick dragon, and a bear prince. The characters speak in contemporary slang, which plays nicely against the traditional fantastic settings.
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Book description
The Witchmaid's Quest
Maggie Brown was a hearthwitch, good at whipping up banquets and starting fires, not a true witch like her Granny, who could turn men into birds, or her Aunt Sybil, who could see into the present.
But when Maggie's beautiful but emptyheaded sister Amberwine ran off with a raggle-taggle gypsy, it was up to unkempt, unruly Maggie to track her down.
So she set out with Ching, the talking cat, and Colin Songsmith, a travelling minstrel who was not so bad once you got to know him, to bring back her wayward sister.
On the way they met a gnome, a unicorn, a mermaid, a lovesick dragon and an enchanted bear, braved ambush, flood and abduction by gypsies, and stormed the lair of a particularly evil sorcerer, in a rescue mission fraught with excitement and danger.
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