Category: Fantasy

Healing the Twelve Dancing Princesses

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult2 Comments

Two of my favorite fairy tales are “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and “Beauty and the Beast.”  So of course I was intrigued by a novel that promised to retell both of them.  The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell lived up to the promise, and it was a great book.

This is another version that tells the “Dancing Princesses” story from the POV of a girl removed from the curse itself (that is, not one of the princesses).  Reveka is the herbalist’s apprentice at the princesses’ castle, and dreams of one day having an herbary of her own.  She thinks she sees the way to achieve that dream by curing the princesses of their curse, and accepting the promised monetary reward.  As she uses her herbcraft and her wit to delve into the mystery, she finds that things are much less black and white than they seem, and that, of course, all of this will have very unexpected consequences for her.

As always with fairy tale retellings, I love the unique touches.  I love that there’s a monetary reward for women who solve the curse; most versions don’t consider how limiting a reward a princess’ hand in marriage really is.  The curse has an added dimension because people who stay in the princesses’ room either fall asleep, unable to waken, or disappear entirely.  That adds so much more risk to the story (and means that the King doesn’t have to behead anyone, something every re-teller finds a way around).  I love that there’s a handsome friend who’s in prime position to be the love interest…but it’s all more complicated than that.  And Reveka’s father–well, I should have figured out his role in the story much sooner than I did!

I felt drawn to Reveka as a heroine at once.  I’m realizing that strong girls who are unappreciated by the adults in their life immediately pull me in.  I want things to be better for them.  Reveka has a difficult (but normal for her time) past, and big dreams for her future.  She wants to solve the curse to help herself, but also to help the sleepers, so she has a realistic blend of motivations.

I liked the handling of the princesses as well.  Most blend together as an amorpheous mass (there are twelve of them, after all) but it works, because I don’t feel like I’m supposed to know who most of them are.  There are two that emerge as larger characters, and the rest mostly hover in the background.  Since they’re rarely brought forward, I’m not struggling to place them as I read, and it doesn’t bother me that I don’t know who they are.  Beyond that, they’re interestingly complex, neither the saints of most retellings or the (possible) villains of the original.  They’re real girls who are making difficult choices, and while they may do some villainous things, I don’t feel that they’re heartless or evil.

This is obviously a fantasy, but it also has a historical fiction feel.  It’s set in a fictional country, but one which is firmly planted in 15th-century Eastern Europe.  There are references to convents and saints, and a lot of historical herb-lore.  The herb-lore is never overwhelming or superfluous, and I think it serves a purpose to ground the story.  That level of detail and Reveka’s level of knowledge about it gives her more maturity and depth and gives the story more…solidity is the only word I can think of.  The premise (of the first half at least) reminds me of The Thirteenth Princess, but that one felt lighter and less plausible, and the heroine felt shallower.  The historical grounding isn’t the only thing making the difference here, but it helps.

The story wraps up in the end, but leaves some questions unanswered and…well, I can’t fully explain without a spoiler, but I wanted a more complete wrap-up.  So now I very much want a sequel!  Apparently I’m not the only one, because Merrie Haskell mentions the subject on her website–but all she says is that she promises a sequel if the publishers decide to put one out.  How very inconclusive!  So I’m hoping, and in the meantime, it was an excellent addition to my list of Dancing Princesses retellings!

Author’s Site: http://www.merriehaskell.com/

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Walking Ankh-Morpork with Sam Vimes–Both of Him

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Summer in Discworld2 Comments

I wanted to read some new Discworld books this summer, but I’ve also been meaning to re-read Night Watch.  This was the first proper Discworld book I ever read.  Technically I read Maskerade first, but I read it as a Phantom parody, paid no attention to the larger context, and despite madly loving it, I was somehow not inspired to go on to the rest of the series (can’t quite explain that).

So Night Watch is where it really started for me.  I don’t recommend anyone else start here, as it makes absolutely no sense as a place to begin.  More on that in a bit.

The book focuses almost exclusively on Sam Vimes, who remains my favorite Discworld character.  He’s the head of Ankh-Morpork’s City Guard, and has been instrumental in making them into the force they are today (and weren’t a few books earlier).  While attempting to apprehend a serial killer, Vimes is caught in a freak storm above the Library of Unseen University, where the wizards reside.

Vimes and the killer are thrown thirty years back in time.  Due to complications and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey technobabble, Vimes ends up taking the place of the copper who taught a young Sam Vimes how to be a copper–so it all becomes rather circular and you can’t think about it too hard (Vimes tries not to).  If mentoring his younger self while keeping an eye out for that killer on the loose isn’t enough, Ankh-Morpork of the past isn’t the comparatively well-ordered place of today.  Corruption is rife, plots are afoot, and a revolution is in the making.  Vimes remembers how it all came out, but there’s no guarantee things can’t change, wiping out his own future.

It’s a slightly complicated plot, but somehow it works right along while you’re actually reading it.  I think that was true the first time I read it too.  I liked it even better on a re-read, because I knew who everyone was.  Part of the fun of the book is seeing recognizable characters when they were much younger.  Nobby Nobs is a street urchin (and as ugly as ever), Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler has yet to acquire his trademark phrase, and Vetinari is still in Assassin School.  None of that means anything without reading other books, which is why it makes no sense to start here (funny how that’s always a topic when discussing Discworld, and so rarely one for any other series!)

I can even argue that you get an extra layer if you read later books first.  The narration keeps referring to Vimes’ younger self as “Young Sam.”  In the present-day portion, Vimes’ wife is very pregnant, and in later books we see that their son is called (wait for it) Young Sam.  So there’s definitely a father theme going on that becomes much clearer when familiar with later books.  Discworld is so sequentially confused.

The best thing about Night Watch is that you get to see Vimes at his Vimesest.  He’s a copper and he’s tough and he’s practical.  He doesn’t seem to believe much in honor, while being very honorable.  He believes in Law and he believes his job is to keep the peace and protect the ordinary man–while having no illusions about the nobility of your typical Ankh-Morporkian.  He’s the kind of man who doesn’t fight a mob or yell them into submission.  He steps out in front of the mob, lights a cigar, asks if they’re having a pleasant night and would they like to step into the Watch House for some cocoa, and if not they really ought to go on home, it’s getting cold.  And it works.

Vimes understands Ankh-Morpork and its people, he knows the streets and he knows the crowds and he can handle all of it.  I love this book because we get to see all of this.  In some of the earlier books, Vimes is still evolving.  Some of the later ones deal more with politics, and the most recent, Snuff, takes him out of Ankh-Morpork (which was a mistake, I think, and though I like the book I’ve just now realized this is why it wasn’t better than it was).

Night Watch is set in a different time so a lot of regulars and recurring characters aren’t in it.  But that’s actually okay, because the result is that we get lots of Vimes instead.

My conclusion is, don’t start here, because significant portions won’t mean anything.  But if you’ve read any City Guard books to give you context and if you like Vimes, this is a particularly magnificent installment in the series.  It’s definitely one of my favorites.

Author’s Site: http://terrypratchettbooks.com/

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Classic Review: Wildwood Dancing

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult4 Comments

I reviewed some really good books when I first started this blog.  But most of you weren’t here yet!  Since I’m coming up on a busy month right now, I thought it was a good time to share again some of those early reviews.  Most of you probably haven’t read them before anyway…

Today, here’s the very first review I posted.  This book is largely responsible for my interest in “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” fairy tale, as it’s the one that got me started.  One person who read this review was Juliet Marillier, the author.  I wrote her an email and she sent me a very nice, personalized reply.  I knew she was awesome!

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I plan to cover good and bad books on this blog, but for a first post, I thought I’d start with a favorite.  Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier is a wonderful fairy tale retold–two fairy tales, in fact, artfully combining “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and “The Frog Prince.”

I love retellings of classic fairy tales.  The original classics tend to have…certain issues, like helpless heroines and not entirely coherent plot lines.  But they usually have some spark that fascinates us–which I imagine is why they became classics to begin with.  For “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” perhaps it’s the idea that you can escape your ordinary life every full moon to go dancing in a magic land (though the magic land is more or less threatening in different versions).  For “The Frog Prince,” transformation stories, changing what is into something that’s better, have an eternal appeal.

So when you can take that essential spark and reshape a new story around it, one with a vivid and intricate plot, and with an appealing and capable heroine, then you’ve got something really good.

Wildwood Dancing is about Jena and her four sisters.  They live in rural Transylvania, at Piscul Dracului, and for nine years they have been slipping away in the night to dance at the fairy court every full moon.  Jena’s closest companion is Gogu, who’s quite sweet and charming, as well as being an enchanted frog.  Jena and her sisters encounter conflict in both the human and magical world, from mysterious strangers appearing in the Fairy Court, and from an overbearing cousin who seeks to take over Piscul Dracului.

With vivid characters and exciting turns in the plot, this book stays engaging throughout.  And, on the whole, it’s at least as sweet and charming as Gogu.  I can’t say the biggest “twist” of the book surprised me, but that may be me–I’m usually good at guessing twists that I think are supposed to be unexpected.  That’s not always a bad thing though–sometimes when a twist does surprise me, I end up feeling rather like a victim of “bait and switch.”  This book, on the other hand, feels as though everything came out perfectly, gloriously right.  I read the conclusion to the romance twice–and again just now.  It’s that cute.  🙂

Author’s website: http://www.julietmarillier.com/

Enter Three Witches

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Summer in Discworld5 Comments

I finally managed to read the first proper Witches novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, Wyrd Sisters.  This was another Shakespearean-inspired one, with heavy Macbeth undertones.  Except, of course, it’s a comedy!

Duke Felmet killed a king to gain the throne of Lancre, and now has a few problems.  For one thing, he can’t seem to get the blood off his hands.  And for another, there are three witches in the neighborhood.  Magrat is a well-meaning witch who thought it would be a good idea to form a coven with Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.  They don’t quite understand her interest in talismans and rituals (because it’s really headology that counts), but they join anyway.  The dead king’s baby son falls into their hands and they promptly pack him off with adoptive parents in a traveling theatre company.  Meanwhile the dead king is still hanging around as a ghost, there’s a Fool remarkably interested in Magrat, and the land doesn’t like its new ruler.

The witches are in fine form here.  This is the first with all three of them, but they’re already fully-defined.  Granny wasn’t quite there yet in her earlier book, Equal Rites, but she’s excellent here, with a will of iron–or harder.  Nanny is garrulous, irreverent and fun-loving, but don’t ever cross her (or invite her to sing).  Magrat, well…she tries so hard.  She wants to be a proper witch, with all the ceremony and theatrics, and doesn’t quite seem to realize it’s just not meant to be.

It may be the little touches I like best here.  The ghost king is thoroughly annoyed by all the other ghosts floating through his castle–it’s so crowded, and some are just blobs who have really let themselves go.  There’s a mystic stone out on a hill that’s so bashful it hides if anyone comes by.  There are frequent Macbeth quotes, as well as other Shakespeare references; the theatre company puts on a wide variety of identifiable albeit re-named plays.

And Death of course has a cameo, and he’s wonderful.  He’s much better at the role than the actor assigned to be Death in the play, and he’s very disturbed when a living character goes mad and decides to become a ghost (because…that’s just not allowed).

There’s a cartoon miniseries, which naturally is going straight into my Netflix queue.  Has anyone seen it?  Is it any good?

I think this would be a great place for someone to start the Discworld series.  It’s independent of earlier ones, introduces major characters, and is brilliantly funny.  It begins the Witches plotline, which spans several books that are more interconnected than most of Discworld.  It worked out for me, even though I read them in reverse order…but you might be better off going front-to-back!

Author’s Site: http://terrypratchettbooks.com/

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A Shadow of a Plot in a Shadow World

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews2 Comments

On my quest to finish series, I picked up The Shadow World by Jane Johnson, second book in the Eidolon Chronicles.  (Read my review of Book One, The Secret Country.)  The Eidolon Chronicles centers on Ben, an ordinary boy who finds out his mother is really the Queen of a magical country.  She came to our world to marry Ben’s father, but now they’ve discovered that in her absence, the magic is dying and the country is being taken over by the evil, dog-headed Dodman.

The second book picks up soon after the first.  Ben’s mother, Isadora, has resolved to return to her country to fight the Dodman.  Ben’s older sister Ellie follows her, and Ben and his father follow Ellie.  Isadora’s negotiations with the Dodman take a very difficult turn when he captures Ellie.  Ben and his friends, including Iggy the talking cat (my favorite character), have to go to the rescue.

This book was good for what it was and disappointing for what it wasn’t.  There was nothing exactly wrong with what was there, but there just wasn’t much.  As they say, there was no there there.  This felt very much like a sequel, especially one that’s Book Two of a trilogy.  It didn’t move anything much forward, either in plot or in character development.  Isadora goes back to the magic country at the very beginning, and a couple of villians join forces at the very end, and everything in-between felt mostly unnecessary to developing any larger story.  The main conflict was rescuing Ellie, but her capture felt contrived.

I don’t mean to make this an entirely negative review though.  The characters were still engaging, the magic was still interesting.  I just wanted more that was new.  I wanted the characters to be gaining more depth, or to encounter new and different magic.  There was a little of that, but it didn’t feel like enough.  We did get to know Ellie a bit better, and there was a little more of Awful Cousin Cynthia, who’s a great creepy villain.

This was a perfectly fun book, but it also seemed to lack any real purpose.  I’m still going to read the last book in the trilogy.  The first book introduced everything, and hopefully the third will tie everything up.  The second book probably just suffers from being, well, the second book of a trilogy, with no purpose except to mark time between the beginning and the end.  Still, if you read the first book and like it, it’s worth reading the second.  Just don’t expect too much, and plan to move quickly along to the third!

Author’s Site: http://www.janejohnsonbooks.com/

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