The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede

Is it just me, or are all of the stories involving a princess about a discontent princess who doesn't want to be a princess? (At least most of the modern tales seem to be that way.)

Princess Cimorene may not be happy being a princess, but she definitely doesn't fit into the mold of your typical discontented princess. Fortunately, that part of the story ends by the end of the first chapter, and Cimorene can move on to more important details.

To avoid marrying a rather worthless prince, Cimorene follow the advice of a talking frog and makes her way to a cave. This cave just happens to be filled with dragons. The dragons debate what to do with her since "It just isn't done" for a dragon to take a willing princess. One of the dragons, Kazul, declares that this tradition is stupid and takes Cimorene on as her princess.

Cimorene has to deal with all sorts of duties that she actually enjoys-organizing the library and a variety of collections, cooking dragon-sized meals, and leaning about magic and fighting. She also has to deal with a variety of heroes trying to rescue her.

So things seem to be going well, so let's throw in some complications. What about wizards? In this world, wizards get to use magic by stealing it from other sources. They are always trying to find new sources of magic and causing trouble. Oh, dragons are allergic to wizards because their staffs try to take the magic that dragons generate naturally.

Dragons and wizards don't get along for another reason, because wizards are not polite, and dragons demand a certain level of formality.

The first book is Dealing with Dragons and deals with Cimorene and friends trying to prevent the wizards from influencing the choice of the next King of the Dragons.

What about this Enchanted Forest?
In the Enchanted Forest, we meet King Mendenbar who also isn't terribly excited about the formality of his role as the King. In fact, if it weren't for the awesome magical powers, he would probably just walk away from it all. You see, the King of the Enchanted Forest is able to access the magic of the forest directly. He sees the magical patterns and use it by reaching out and touching the magical field.

He discovers that part of the forest has been damaged. It looks like it was burned, and since there are dragon scales in the area, it must have been a dragon. He travels to the Mountains of Morning to talk with Kozul the King of the Dragons. (King is a job so gender doesn't matter a little bit.)

Mendenbar meet Cimorene and they get along pretty well even though her dislike of princes and his dislike of princesses could have been a sticky issue. Kozul is missing, and the two decide to go looking for her.

I'm going to skip  books three and four so I can talk about some of the great characters you get to meet in these stories.

• Morwen is not your typical witch. She doesn't wear a pointy hat and she has nine cats instead of one, but she is an amazing woman. Her door is enchanted to go wherever she wants it to go. Her sleeves are enchanted to hold lots of stuff. She is an amazing witch, and she is an amazing friend.
• Telemain is an absent-minded magician. He is often mistaken for a wizard, but while wizards steal magic and only work with their staffs, magicians work with a variety of magics. Telemain works in a variety of cool things like magic mirrors and helping Mendenbar understand the magics of the Enchanted Forest.

Those two are also main characters, but I also want to give you some incentive to read these books by listing some other characters you will encounter.

• All of Morwen's cats because the story follows her in the third book, so you get to hear them.
• Killer-a rabbit that falls under a variety of enchantments and ends up as an intangible blue donkey with wings.
• The giant and his wife from Jack and the beanstalk
• Herman, the descendant of Rumplestiltskin, who has a large number of children he has won from spinning straw into gold. He loves them, but he can't afford them.
• Old MacDonald

There are plenty of others to mention, but hopefully I've convinced you to check them out if you haven't already.