★★★☆☆ The Dark Lord's Daughter, by Patricia Wrede
Amusing, clever, but kind of meh...
The Dark Lord's Daughter
Patricia Wrede
Amusing, clever, but kind of meh...
As The Dark Lord's Daughter starts, our hero, Kayla Jones, is at the State Fair with with mother Riki and brother Del. Although Riki, Kayla, and Del are a happy family, they are a family under stress. Michael Jones, Riki's husband and Kayla and Del's father, died not long ago. Fourteen-year-old Kayla had to be strong for Riki.
So, anyway, there they are at the State Fair, one of the few fun outings they can afford to allow themselves, when Kayla is unexpectedly confronted by an armored and masked knight with a magic stone. All four of them are suddenly whisked away to a different world. The knight, whose name is Waylan, informs Kayla that she is the biological daughter of a former Dark Lord of this world, now dead, and that she must take his place as the new Dark Lady.
The new world is magical, but drearily so. Kayla's castle turns out to be terribly run down, and her army is tiny and minions few. There are no showers, the food is truly awful, and the clothing she is expected as Dark Lady to wear is, in a word, "tacky". The one really bright bit of magic is Kayla's tablet computer, which, in coming to the new world, is transformed into her familiar.
Reflecting on why everything is so run down, Kayla thinks to herself
Detsini blamed everything on the lack of a Dark Lord, and Jezzazar blamed Tradition, but Kayla thought it was more likely that neither of them had any common sense.
Riki, Kayla, and Del bring loads of common sense. That, more or less, is what The Dark Lord's Daughter is about -- the onslaught of common sense.
My feelings about The Dark Lord's Daughter were mostly positive, but muted. It made me smile many times, but it never made me laugh. It's clever, but never brilliant. The plot is interesting, but not gripping.
Although the book doesn't exactly end on a cliff-hanger, it does end with important issues unresolved. It cries out for a sequel. Since it is recently published (5-Sep-2023), it seems likely that there will be one. If so, I will read it.