I read this a few years ago so don't recall a great deal about it. It commences with a mother being lured away to nurse a child in fairyland - the child of the king and queen - and what happens to her husband and her own child in her absence. ( )

high fantasy set in faerie land. a bit slight going in, but in the end it feels like it might belong on the shelf with Lin Carter's Ballantyne series of classic fantasies: pretty good company. based on various ballads collected by Child and others, which gives it a different look and, with a Russian Baba Yaga thrown into the field to meddle with outcomes, it offers up a few twists on that trad cold hillside end. ( )

This book was brief but, to me, very satisfying despite a flaw or two. The book is based on Norse and Scottish folk ballads and myths (e.g. Hugin and Munin, Odin's two ravens, make a couple of appearances).

It's written in a lyrical way, reading very much like those tales and myths as they would have been told by some bard at a feast in a great house. Yet in the case of the two youngest characters, you do get into their heads and their experience quite thoroughly. The characters feel much very sympathetic and real.

There was the occasional weak point, like the swiftness with which the prince solved his personal problem, or the blank spot where the reader wanted to witness a long-sought family reunion. Those weren't minor, and the book is weaker because of them.

But on the whole, I really loved the book, and for the most part, it was an enchanting tale. ( )