The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

You never know what intriguing piece of lore the narrator's going to throw into the mix. One minute she's reminiscing about geoducks in her childhood home, the next she's on a tear about Agatha Christie. The weapon of choice in one of several duels September faces is Latin conjugations. All of it's presented with such casual exuberance that readers who get the references will be especially tickled, and those who don't will find plenty of interesting stuff to learn.

While there are outright villains and assorted questionable characters at every turn, our protagonist and her loved ones show many positive qualities -- loyalty, devotion, courage, and creative thinking being high on the list -- and put their particular talents to work to help one another. As Queen, September chooses the title of the Engineer, honoring her mom's and her own tinkering and repair skills. Her instincts for diagnosing and fixing things are crucial to the story. The narrator, who's a strong character herself, is long on brains, off-the-wall humor, wild imagination, chutzpah, and, most of all, a heart as big as the universe as she dispenses such pearls of wisdom as "She didn't like to say things flatly, but sometimes it is the perfect antidote to someone trying to convince you the noose in their hand is a lovely silk ribbon for your hair."

The series includes a fair amount of gender-bending (e.g., characters with opposite-sex names or job titles) and matter-of-fact acceptance of gay relationships, but there's no sexual content. In Book 1, it's revealed that on at least one possible time ine, September and Saturday have a daughter. Here, they kiss several times, with much intensity and magic, amid many dangers and reality shifts. But make no mistake: Within its own universe, the story is profoundly romantic, as in this speech by a character confronting an adversary:

"We've only just wed. In the Autumn Provinces, in the Worsted Wood. I put a wreath of kelp round her neck, and she painted her name upon my eyelids. She wore green; I wore blue. We danced for three days, my wife and I -- along with a Wyverary, a wombat, a Dodo, a family of trolls, a matchstick girl, a gramophone, a whole gang of shadows, a Yeti and his dog, a talking lamp, Winds of every color, a wairwulf and both his wives. Seventeen versions of me were there, along with her parents and mine and a pooka and Ajax Oddson, the greatest Racemaster who ever lived. We told each other our true names and fell asleep among our friends, covered in moonlight and the silver comfort of the right ending. She is my wife and I am her own and you were not invited. Leave us alone."

The character Aroostook is a Model A Ford.