CoW Ep. 208: Questing for Princesses (& Ep. 229 Staff Pick)

[danooli]

Episode 208: Questing for Princesses by Amanda C. Davis

(edit: This is also Episode 228, as Audio Producer Jeremy Carter’s Staff Pick for 2016!)

• Narrated by Katherine Inskip
• Originally appeared in Wolves and Witches: A Fairy Tale Collection (2013)

Amanda C. Davis writes dark fantasy, light horror, and the very softest science fiction. She has an engineering degree and an obsession with baking the perfect macaron. Her short fiction and poetry was collected in 2013 along with her sister Megan Engelhardt‘s work in Wolves and Witches: A Fairy Tale Collection, where this story first appeared.

Check our her website and follow her on Twitter.

The story is narrated for you by slush wrangler Katherine Inskip. Katherine teaches astrophysics for a living and spends her spare time populating the universe with worlds of her own, which you can read at her blog, Trisigmatic. She’s on Twitter as well.

Prince Harold swore off marriage at the age of six, when his older brother Yancey came riding home with a new bride and a waterfall of half-healed scars along his right side that he called "the unexpected bonus for winning a princess from a fire-breathing dragon."

Harold eyed the puckered skin on Yancey's neck and cheek. "Does it hurt?"

Click here to listen to Episode 208
Click here to read the text of the story

Tags: adventure, Amanda C. David, Cast of Wonders, Comedy, dragon, expectation, family, Fantasy, growing up, Jeremy Carter, Katherine Inskip, obligation, parents, prince, princess, quest, realizations, siblings, tradition, Young Adult fiction

[Fenrix]

<3 Nicely done!

[Sandra M. Odell]

Really enjoyed this episode.  From the narration to the story, it hit the spot and made me smile.

[Unblinking]

Very fun idea, and I like the subversion of expectations in the intentional avoidance of quests, and the specific theme that we fall in love with the person at the end of the quest that is best suited to us and maybe that's not dragonslaying.