Tigerlilja Erin Michelle Sky, Steven Brown In  J.M. Barrie 's  Peter Pan  Peter's great ally is Tiger Lily, who is introduced thus ...Tiger Lily, proudly erect, a princess in her own right. She is the most beautiful of dusky Dianas and the belle of the Piccaninnies, coquettish, cold and amorous by turns; there is not a brave who would not have the wayward thing to wife, but she staves off the altar with a hatchet. There's obviously a lot there that's problematic in the 21st century. So she gets a rewrite in this  Erin Michelle Sky  and  Steven Brown  prequel to  Tales of the Wendy . In addition, we get an origin story for Peter, something that to my knowledge  Barrie  never supplied. In fact, we start with Peter. Peter, it transpires, is descended from gods.  Sky  and  Brown  freely mix Norse and Greek gods here. In seeking to protect him from ancestral enemy Buri, Peter's mother accidentally curses him. You will forg...

And I Darken Kiersten White Vlad Dracula , also known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad III of Wallachia, was the Voivode (ruler) of Wallachia (a part of what is now Romania) between 1448 and 1477. He was a contemporary of  Mehmed the Conqueror , the sultan of the Ottoman Empire (which became Turkiye) who eventually conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul, as  They Might be Giants  reminds us), ending the Byzantine Empire. It was an exciting time in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe! A historical novel about Vlad and Mehmed thus seems like a great idea. What we have here, however, is  close  to, but not  exactly  that.  Kiersten White 's  Conqueror's Saga , of which  And I Darken  is the first book, is an alternative history version of that time and place. The "alternative" part comes in the shape of Ladislav (that's a feminine form of "Vlad"). In  And I Darken  the first child of Vlad II (who in the real world was the father of Vlad...

Troll Bridge Terry Pratchett Cohen the Barbarian's father told him, he told him, "Son, when you can face down a troll in single combat, then you can do anything." Cohen wants to defeat a troll in single combat before he dies. But the task is beginning to look urgent. First, Cohen is no longer a young hero. As Cohen's horse tells him, "One day you're going to die. It might be today." That's the first problem. The second is that troll bridges are in short supply. As Cohen tells his horse, When did you last see a bridge with a troll under it? There were hundreds of 'em when I was a lad. Now there's more trolls in the cities than there are in the mountains. So, he's found an old stone bridge that still has a troll. The troll's name is Mica. Like Cohen, Mica is himself a relic of the old days. He is still proud to uphold the old trollish tradition of defending a bridge. What's more, he's chuffed at the prospect of being killed by a...