by Patricia Wrede
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Deep in the Enchanted Forest, in a neat gray house with a wide porch and a red roof, lived the witch Morwen and her nine cats.”
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Others in the series: Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons
It’s about a year after Cimorene and Mendenbar got married, and things are afoot in the Enchanted Forest. Again. (Yes, it is the wizards. Again.) This time, Morwen was clued into the problems by a six-foot-tall rabbit named Killer. Things get a little trickier when they — Morwen, the cats, and Killer, of course — get to the castle to find out that the wizards have stolen the sword that the magic of the Enchanted Forest is tied to.
Unfortunately, that means Mendenbar (unfortunately, in A’s opinion) has to stay in the forest, while everyone else (including Killer) goes off to find the sword and get it back from those nasty wizards. They end up on a few adventures, and in some interesting pickles. Eventually, the six-foot-tall rabbit ends up a six-foot-tall blue floating donkey with wings, but that’s neither here nor there, really.
In fact, that’s kind of what we thought of this book, as well. A lost interest in it; even though I read it out loud to her, she bailed about 2/3 of the way through. And the ending — which practically requires you to read book 4 — was highly irritating.
We should have bailed at the last book, but now that I’ve come this far, I think I’m just going to have to read the next one just to see how it ends.
The Book Nut 
Sometimes you just have to stop a series if it isn't working for you. I have good memories of this one, and my daughter owns the paperback boxed set. Hmmm. I'm trying to think if I've had a lot of students give up on this series. I do know that it's one I can get a lot of boys to read!
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The problem with this series is that Book 4, if I recall correctly, was written first. Then the author wrote Books 1 and 2, which stood just fine on their own thank you. But then she was faced with, OH. I have to get them into the pickle that book 4 got them out of.
I'm with you . . . 3 is definitely my least fave. I think it doesn't help that the MC is neither Cimorene nor Mendenbar. Book 4 is not a strong contender for my fave either (kind of want to smack the MC a lot), but it at least ends properly.
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