The Frog Prince’s Daughters. BooksforaBuck, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-60215-102-4
Cover image: Andreas Reh, www.andreasreh.de
Anura is a fairytale princess whose prince won’t come. When a fireball-wielding wizard shows up instead and makes a determined effort to murder her, her stubborn cousin Rana decides it’s time to make the prince come, any way she can.
But the wizard hasn’t given up — and he’s got more in mind than just murder…
As an ebook, it’s DRM-free and multi-format so you can read it on any ereader you use, and it costs less than US$4 to stretch your reading dollar further. Read it on a dedicated reader like Kindle, or on devices like the iPhone or Android-powered mobile phones.
Reviews
What a delight. Clever ideas, vivid characters, and an intriguing premise are all wrapped up with fairy-tale charm and tied with an unexpected ribbon of believability.” – Anne Cordwainer, author of the Prospero series: Modern Magic and Mind Magic.
I’m not a regular fantasy fiction reader. Nonetheless, I was enchanted by Palmer’s story. It seems a good introduction to the genre, or just a solid story for anyone looking for some action, suspense, romance, dragons, and princesses on a lazy weekend.” – Laura McDonald, Girlebooks.com.
I’ve easily read 1000s of books (many in the fantasy genre), so now am a bit shocked when I come across a unique and well-written tale. So many books these days feel like they follow the same general outline with different names inserted for the characters. It was truly a pleasure to read a book that I didn’t want to put down to go to sleep (I had a really hard time getting up for work this morning!). I will be on the lookout for your future books, and hope that they are populated with people as interesting and complicated as in the Frog Prince’s.” – a reader, by email.
Where to buy
Buy it directly from the publisher, or through these distributors:
Amazon. PRINT EDITION.
Fictionwise. Multiple formats.
Amazon Kindle. Kindle format only.
eReader.com. eReader format only.
All Romance Ebooks. Multiple formats.
Mobipocket. Mobipocket reader format only.
Cyberread. Mobipocket reader format only.
Smashwords. Multiple formats. Downloadable sample.
You can also listen along to it in podcast format.
Excerpt
Here’s the opening lines of The Frog Prince’s Daughters:
It began the year the king remarried and Anura turned sixteen, when the roses came out and failed to rival the beauty of the princess. She had spent the whole of spring catching light and flower-scent in her golden hair, and the castle held its breath and waited for her prince to come. But he did not, and he did not, and he did not.
When spring turned to summer and the geese came back to hunt frogs in the pond, Rana, cousin to the princess, resorted to a borrowed copy of the Book and read through the histories for mention of an obstinately late prince.
Rana was more avoiding her cousin than expecting a real solution from the Book—the sighing and moping and fairytale beauty were enough to test anyone’s patience, let alone Rana’s famous dearth of it. She had to bite her tongue to keep herself from pointing out that someday Anura’s prince would come but it didn’t have to be that particular day.
Anura caught her out, finding her in the sun-greyed gazebo by the pond, its latticed sides open to the breeze. Rana was curled up on old cushions with a jug of mead and the sharp white cheese from the south.
‘Rana, if you would let me near a spindle, or an apple, or even my own stepmother, you would not have to go back through those stupid old stories trying to work out why my prince hasn’t come.’
Rana put the leatherbound volume aside. Anura was right. Their answer was within the castle, not the Book. Her name was Amaryths, and she had married the king a month ago.
But all she said, tartly, was, ‘I’d rather not be ensorcelled into one hundred years of sleep just so you can have a wake-up kiss.’
Anura smiled to Rana’s sharp tongue, in her pretty way, and sat absently picking at the seam of a faded red cushion. The smile withered and Rana waited.
‘There’s a very pretty scullery maid working in the kitchen,’ the princess admitted, having picked open the seam and released feathers to float in the air about her.
She often had delicate things floating around her now, feathers, rose petals, a sweep of leaves, strands of moonlight like the fabled white-gold pearls of Joyri. That, and the scent of her, and the way her golden hair fell, and her pale brow, were all reasons why a scullery maid, even a very pretty one, should not have worried her. Except—she was at the very zenith of her fairytale potential, and her prince had not yet come.
Rana made herself raise a scornful eyebrow to that worry. ‘Oh, please,’ she scoffed. ‘It’s your turn, Anura.’
Her turn in the way the Domain worked, where fathers of beautiful yet well-mannered children counted on riches or at least a comfortable retirement, and kings and queens made lists of their neighbours’ eligible children and tried to predict which fairytale Imperative would ensnare them.
Anura normally listened to Rana, but now she would only be appeased when they heard a splashing and she sprang to the other side of the gazebo in time to see a frog escaping into the depths. At least, she called out to Rana that it was a frog, a fine omen.
Rana privately suspected it could have been a flash of a carp’s fin and Anura still would have claimed it for herself. ‘You don’t need omens. You just need to be patient.’
The princess turned to her, smiling, possibly at the idea of Rana counselling patience, but the smile transformed to a drilling shriek. She backed away, staring wide-eyed at something over Rana’s shoulder, her hands clenched to her sun-brightened cheeks.
Rana stood to face the vine-shaded entrance to the gazebo, heart beating hard, thinking that finally the tale had begun and the prince would come. She held her only weapon, the little age-darkened copy of the Book she had taken from the Archive that morning. She half-expected the stepmother, Amaryths.
All she saw was a slender and sleek young man, strange only in his peculiar costume, but nothing to be afraid of. He was not tall, though taller than Rana, and wore a long white tunic with sweeping sleeves, and loose trousers of the same light material. His feet were bare.
The oddity of him was the paint he wore, all along his visible left side, from the very tips of his hair to the ends of his toenails; she assumed it continued under his clothes too. The bright red and blue and green and yellow paintwork decorated him in an intricate pattern difficult to look at and impossible to make sense of. On his right side, the unpainted side, he sported straight black hair to the nape of his neck, and clear bronze skin. His dark eyes regarded her unblinkingly. He was very quietly humming to himself.
The garishness of one side of his face and the blandness of the other made his expression hard to read, but Rana would have sworn he was puzzled as he returned her own frowning and confused regard.
His attention switched to the still-screaming Anura, and he lifted his hands and threw fire at her…
Oh no! What’s going to happen? You can keep reading up until page 33 here at Smashwords.
