Chalice

A gently paced mostly-slice-of-life story about (essentially) an anxious court witch who has to figure out the job as she goes, with lots of pleasantly dense worldbuilding by implication and some good bee magic. I fell into it easily, as is often the case with McKinley. Let down a bit by its somewhat perfunctory ending.

4.5 stars

This is such a McKinley novel--the mixture of fairytale magic and earthy domesticity, the animals (in this case, bees) as devoted friends and familiars of the protagonist, the magical climactic scene, the Beauty and the Beast romance. I kiiiind of wish it had been fleshed out a bit more, but it's still a lovely read.