Never After, Rebecca Lickiss
Light fantasy - a rearrangement of a bunch of fairytales (Sleeping
Beauty, Rumpelstilskin, etc) into one narrative. Not Pratchett. Not
awful - the joks are internal to the plot, not anachronisms, and there
are some really clunky sentences in the beginning ("
Its turrets
and towers standing defiant though surrounded and overrun by
herbage.") but either the prose improved, or the plot was a
distraction, by the end.
A sequel might be a better book: the best characters in this one are
also the ones who ride off into the sunset to have more adventures.
2003-04-03: Outside of a Dog gives very clear reasons for disliking Never After a great deal; I can no longer remember it in enough detail to agree or disagree.
So wrote clew in
SF&F.