Castle Waiting. Vols. 1 and 2 by Linda Medley. 457 p. and 375 p. respectively.
I was very excited to get Vol. 2 of this--it just came out last week--and after I read it I had to pull out vol. 1 again. Castle Waiting was the castle whose population slept for a hundred years during Sleeping Beauty's curse. When she awoke and ran off with her handsome prince, the castle was mostly abandoned. Now just a handful of people live there, and it's known as a place of refuge. The first volume follows Jain's travels to reach the castle and claim sanctuary for herself and her child, who is born shortly after their arrival; we get backstory on a couple of the other inhabitants. Volume two gives backstory on a few more, and visitors drop in for a while. I really enjoyed the visit by the hammerlings (dwarves) and how they shed new light on Henry, one of the long-term residents. These books are very domestic, with much of the action being the day-to-day lives and concerns of the people in the castle, and the stories they tell each other. Yet they are never dull.
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