Reviews

After being rescued from her murderous stepmother, teenager Sno Quantrill shows her appreciation to the silver-haired woman who saved her by joining the ranks of fairy godmothers. Scarborough's light-hearted sequel to The Godmother (Ace, 1994) features a talking cat, a needy tinker named Jack, and an immortal assassin from Ireland's ancient past. The author of The Healer's War (Bantam, 1989) demonstrates her versatility in a tongue-in-cheek fantasy that belongs in most libraries.

In The Godmother (1994), Snow White, aka Snohomish ``Sno'' Quantrill, was one of several unfortunates aided by fairy godmother Felicity Fortune. This delightful sequel puts Sno's further adventures on center stage as, no longer threatened by her evil stepmother, the young woman‘with the full approval of her father, the ``King of Rock'' ('n' Roll)‘heads off to Ireland to become an apprentice to Felicity. Ireland is a revelation to this West Coast media child. There, she meets the godmothers' governing council, including the oldest sprite of them of all, Queen Tatiana, and is given three wishes to use as needed. Soon Sno begins encountering denizens from ancient tales: Puss in Boots, who follows the funeral procession of the King of Cats around Ireland; a Gypsy boy who, searching for his frail and disoriented old mother, falls in with pure evil in the form of a mercenary seeking to foment further discord in Ireland; a flying horse and talking swans, who come to the aid of Sno and her friends. Through third-person narrative and Sno's first-person journal entries, Scarborough offers another tale of modern-day magic and its mythic wellsprings without making it appear ridiculous or sinister‘but simply enchanting. (Dec.)