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silveraspen is a kind person who enjoys furthering my education, which you know from the fact that she is responsible for sending me a copy of The Fire Rose to reread and review. Along with this masterpiece, she also sent along a few Barbara Hamblys, one of which I have not yet read and the other of which was Stranger at the Wedding.

Stranger at the Wedding is basically an adorable high-fantasy-of-manners romp that ends up revolving around a super dark and creepy backstory secret trauma, so I'm just going to come out in advance and give a warning for ( spoilers )

before I go back to talking about the romp.

That said: probably about 70% of the book is hijinks! The plot basically goes like this:

KYRA: I have had a dark premonition that if my baby sister gets married SHE WILL BE DOOMED! So I will ride home to my estranged parents and STOP THE WEDDING. BABY SISTER I AM COMING!
ALIX: But . . . I mean it's really nice to see you but . . . I'm basically fine? Have some cake?
KYRA: Then why do you look SO DEPRESSED? And who is this jerkface who you clearly don't care about that you have been SOLD IN MARRIAGE TO?
THAT JERKFACE: Hi, I'm a sensible, practical, surprisingly reliable merchant who has awesome swashbuckling sea adventures for a living. Nice to meet you!
KYRA: . . . WHAT A JERKFACE. (<3____<3)

So then Kyra runs around deploying all her wily magical hijinks to delay the wedding until she can figure out WHY HER BABY SISTER IS DOOMED, wearing ever-more ridiculous outfits in the process -- I'm not sure if Kyra's fashion sense is explicitly supposed to be terrible, or just DRAMATIC AND INTERESTING in the Claudia Kishi tradition, but it is by far the funniest part of the book. See this front cover?



That purple-and-yellow Batgirl ballgown: TOTALLY CANON. And that in itself would be enough to make me love Kyra.