ArwynAtreides

There are three stories which come to mind when I'm asked what fantasy tales mean the most to me. Although, after a moment's extra thought I realise that my mind focused on one type of character- and aren't tales really about the characters we travel alongside? This character is the 'Self-Saving Princess.' First, there's Ella of Frell from Gail Carson Levine's "Ella Enchanted." I have an odd personal history with this story. The copy of the book I have comes from when I had a little bit of pocket money as a child, in part from selling poems to my dad (my first patron,) and so I had to choose wisely what I was going to spend it on. I visited this book every day I was in the area of the bookshop. I picked it up, read the back, drank in the cover (the 1998 paperback edition), carried the book around the shop as I looked and considered parting with my 6$ (about 2 poems' worth of cash), and then set it back down with a hope that it would still be there next time. Eventually, of course, I