The Tenth Kingdom: Do You Believe in Magic?

The 10th Kingdom is the novelisation of the highly praised and exceptionally lavish television fantasy series. Somewhere between Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and Stephen Donaldson's The Mirror of her Dreams, The 10th Kingdom is New York, from where a portal in Central Park takes waitress Virginia, her father Tony and "the dog formerly known as prince" on an epic adventure through nine realms based on classic fairytales. Virginia encounters Snow White, Cinderella and the Troll King, but this is a very knowing and sometimes surprising retelling, shot through with humour that strikes a fine line between tongue-in-cheek and genuine affection for the original stories:

"I blame my parents," Wolf said. "They were both enormous. They couldn't stop eating. Every day I came home from school and it was eat this, eat that, eat her"

Kathryn Wesley's name may be unfamiliar because she is a pseudonym for two best-selling authors who between them have won the World Fantasy and Hugo Awards and written over 60 previous novels, as well as recently novelising the Arabian Nights miniseries. The 10th Kingdom is inevitably episodic, but it is also whimsically swashbuckling entertaining and anyone who enjoyed Hallmark's Merlin series, novelised by James Mallory as a trilogy beginning with Merlin: The old Magic, should find much pleasure in these worlds of fantasy.--Gary S. Dalkin