Mercedes Lackey and the Five Hundred Kingdoms

The first book of Mercedes Lackey that I read was the Fairy Godmother. Wow. She is an excellent author - bringing the reader into the story (and frankly the reader doesn't want to leave either). Two books have followed in the same series - One Good Knight and Fortune's Fool. Both have pulled me into the stories - giving us teasing glimpses at the heroes/heroines of the previous stories and taking us further into the world of the Five Hundred Kingdoms. The only problem I have seen so far is finishing the book and having to wait until the next one is published. I've read some of books from another series (related to fairy tales) and enjoyed them as well. In particular The Black Swan.

I think the primary draw of these books - at least for me - is the fairy tale. I've taken classes in the fairy tales before - having to write my thoughts and analysis of the tale for my professor to butcher and claim my thoughts as wrong. How the professor knows what was meant by certain tales for certain I will never know. I've also taken a class on creative writing. The poem I wrote was about an itch and somehow a classmate had taken it and believed the poem was about alcoholism.... Uh no... it was about an honest to goodness plain old itch.