10th Kingdom (Hallmark Entertainment Books)

"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