A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn
Target Audience: YA/Teen
Summary:
Talia fell under a spell...Jack broke the curse.
I was told to beware the accursed spindle, but it was so enchanting, so hypnotic...
I was looking for a little adventure the day I ditched my tour group. But finding a comatose town, with a hot-looking chick asleep in it, was so not what I had in mind.
I awakened in the same place but in another time—to a stranger's soft kiss.
I couldn't help kissing her. Sometimes you just have to kiss someone. I didn't know this would happen.
Now I am in dire trouble because my father, the king, says I have brought ruin upon our country. I have no choice but to run away with this commoner!
Now I'm stuck with a bratty princess and a trunk full of her jewels...The good news: My parents will freak!
Think you have dating issues? Try locking lips with a snoozing stunner who turns out to be 316 years old. Can a kiss transcend all—even time?
Type of Adaptation: Combination retelling and modernization
Alex Flinn loves her modernizations, and thank goodness she does, because I love them, too. I am always fascinated by the prospect of putting classic fairy tales into the real, modern world because there are always issues you have to overcome, usually about magic.
So, how does Flinn handle Sleeping Beauty? By keeping Sleeping Beauty’s origin in the fairy tale world, but increasing the length of her sleep so that when she woke up, it was in the modern world with a modern boy, 300 years later. Her kingdom is no longer a recognized kingdom, Jack isn’t a prince, and at 16, he’s gonna get married over his dead body.
And let’s play our game, ladies and gentlemen.
This is such a fascinating idea to me that I’m surprised someone hadn’t done it already. But we start with Talia (nice throwback to “Talia, Sun, and Moon,” one of the oldest and most disturbing Sleeping Beauty stories out there), a princess in the 17th century of a country called Euphrasia, and she has been told from the time she was old enough to understand the words that she must never touch a spindle.
She is told this by everyone, constantly, but no one ever explains why, and no one seems bothered by the fact that she doesn’t really know what a spindle looks like, since there aren’t any anywhere in the kingdom. It takes her years of wheedling to get the story of ‘why’ out of her constant companion, Lady Brooke.
And here’s something I love – Talia may have been gifted with grace and beauty and talent and all that, but for all her fairy gifts, she’s kind of a spoiled brat, and she’s irritating as hell. It’s wonderful because in making her flawed, we both turn her supposed fairy “perfection” on its head and give her room to grow as a character.
And this book more than any others we’ve read so far really brings home the fact that this iconic character doesn’t know anything about the iconic christening except what people are willing to tell her. And in this case, that’s not much. She’s startlingly ignorant of the circumstances because no one tells her about them; they just say “Don’t touch a spindle!”
Anyway, her sixteenth birthday is approaching and all she can think about are the dresses that have been made for her. Her father has commissioned twenty tailors from countries around the world to each create twenty-five gowns for her to pick and choose for her birthday celebrations, and this scene is where we really see just how much of a brat Talia is. Surrounded by such wealthy extravagance and craftsmanship, all she can do is complain because no one has brought a dress of a green the exact shade of her eyes. I mean, you kinda want to strangle this girl and go “Are you freakin’ serious??”
Anyway, she manages to give her caretaker the slip as she goes to visit more rooms with more dresses, and she hears something from up in one of the towers, and so even though there isn’t supposed to be anyone up there, she goes up anyway, and finds a room full of gowns the exact shade of green as her eyes! And it will come as a surprise to no one that this has been orchestrated by Malvolia, the fairy who cursed Talia, and it was all to get her finger pricked on a spindle and bring the curse about.
Enter Jack. 300 years later, mind. Jack’s a teenager from Florida whose entire life is being controlled by his parents regardless of what he might want to do. So they’ve sent him to Europe for the summer because it will look good on a resume for college, but Jack thinks that if he has to walk through one more museum, he’s gonna scream. So instead, he slips away from his tour group, takes a bus to a random small town in Belgium and starts to explore.
And he finds something weird. There’s a great big briar hedge in the middle of this woods, and he works his way through it because he feels like it’s important that he do so. And when he gets through the briars, he’s in one of those fake Renaissance or Colonial time towns, and everyone’s asleep. He can’t wake them up, though he tries, and he keeps exploring, up into the castle.
It’s there that he finds Talia and she’s so beautiful that he decides he’s going to kiss her, but because he’s a modern kid and not a fairy tale prince, he does acknowledge that it’s a little creepy and probably morally wrong for him to kiss a sleeping girl. But he does it anyway.
His kiss wakes her up, but it takes him a while to talk her out of a frenzy, because Talia doesn’t remember going to sleep. And that’s another thing I like about this one – no one really knows what happened. In Talia’s head, she was just looking at all these dresses, and then this strange boy was here kissing her, and she has no idea that 300 years have passed.
And it’s fascinating to look at the fall out in this particular story, because this is not the happy ending anyone wants. Jack is horrified at the idea that he’s now supposed to marry this girl, the King is furious with Talia for doing exactly what she wasn’t supposed to do and sending the kingdom to sleep, and Talia is frustrated with the fact that no one will listen or believe that it wasn’t really her fault. And it all gets worse when the king finds out that he’s not technically a king anymore, that 300 years have passed and the world has changed incredibly. There are fights and arguments and Jack ends up thrown in the dungeon, awaiting execution.
But Talia is angry enough with her father that she grabs her jewelry box, sneaks Jack out of the dungeon, and they run away from Euphrasia. Talia blackmails Jack into taking her with him, and then Jack has to think on his feet because he’s got this girl who talks funny and dresses weirdly and doesn’t understand the first thing about modern technology or customs or anything.
But Talia has to go with Jack, and more than that, she has to make Jack fall in love with her; he woke her up, so he’s her prince, and the only way the curse stays broken is if Jack actually is her one true love. Malvolia has appeared to Talia and told her so. So Talia’s a bit desperate.
Jack uses her jewels to get money to buy her a fake passport and new clothes and plane tickets back to Florida mostly because he knows that bringing her home with him will freak out his parents and make his ex-girlfriend jealous. But it’s also a little because he feels sorry for her – he kinda got her into this mess, and the real world will destroy her if he doesn’t take care of her.
We depart a bit from the Sleeping Beauty narrative for a decent chunk of the book (but we get back to it at the end, which is why I’m still going), so I’m not going to go much into the antics that happen back in Florida. What I will touch on, though, is the way that this relationship between the two evolves. It is fascinating to watch, and really well done.
Talia started off our story as a spoiled brat who didn’t think much about the world around her or the other people in it. Jack helps her realize how important family is, what it’s like to have someone looking out for you and to be that person for someone else, and what talents and skills she has beyond being beautiful. She’s a natural diplomat, and being with Jack really helps her grow up.
Jack, on the other hand, started off our story as a sullen teenager rebelling against his parents, who didn’t want to take on any sort of responsibility, whose main goal in life was to find new ways to get his parents’ attention – usually through causing trouble. Talia helps him realize where his interests actually lie and what he really wants to do with his life, how to find the courage to stand up to his parents in a positive and productive way, and what it means to take responsibility for other people and himself.
They both grow in enormous ways because of the other, and it’s really well done. And Talia’s plan backfires a little. She meant to make Jack fall in love with her. But she found herself falling in love with him, instead. Of course, her plan also works.
But Malvolia feels she’s been cheated out of her ending, and she’s not going to let some immature teenage boy take her victory away from her.
When the curse broke, the hedge around Euphrasia started to disappear, and pretty soon the people could get out, and the King managed to find a reporter and start spreading the tale that his daughter had been kidnapped. The reporter is making a joke out of the whole thing, but it gets picked up by US news, and Jack’s family recognizes the portrait of Talia and demand an explanation.
And Jack is terrified of giving them one because it sounds crazy, but he has enough evidence that they do believe him in the end. And the plan is to take Talia back over to Euphrasia and try to work things out. But that’s before Malvolia steps in.
In the middle of the night, she magicks Talia away, back to her cottage in Euphrasia, and makes it clear in no uncertain terms that Talia and Jack will not be cheating her out of her revenge, that she will be delivering Talia to her father, dead, as was the original plan. Talia will sew the green dress she so envied, and once she has completed it, she will be killed and Malvolia will have won.
Using the skills Jack taught her she had, Talia gets Malvolia to talk about why she wants revenge on the king so badly, and it turns out that the story we all think we know isn’t entirely accurate. Malvolia isn’t a witch, as purported, but a fairy, and Talia isn’t her father’s first born child. There was a boy, born some years before Talia, named George, and Malvolia was the fairy chosen to create his christening gown.
She went to the palace one afternoon to fit it on him, and she was shown to nursery. It was empty. The prince’s nurse had stepped out, and when Malvolia entered, she discovered the baby dead in his crib. She did everything she could to revive him, eventually resorting to magic, which is of course when the nurse came back, saw the magic and the dead baby, and screamed for help.
The king was convinced that Malvolia had killed his son, and he wouldn’t let her defend herself. He called for her death, but she outwitted him and disappeared, and so instead, he had her title of fairy stripped from her, to be known instead as a witch of dark magic, a child killer. It was not true, she had done no such thing, but if the king was determined to blame her for the death of his child, then she vowed that she would one day make it true, hence the curse on Talia.
Talia uses her skills of diplomacy to try and reason with Malvolia, to convince her that her death will not bring justice, that her father was in the wrong, but that Talia being killed for it won’t fix anything. She promises to do what she can to clear Malvolia’s name and to truly see justice served. And because Malvolia isn’t evil, just hurt, and because she can see how Talia has grown and changed, Talia’s words have an effect. She asks if Talia truly loves Jack, and Talia answers truthfully: that she didn’t always, but she has come to, and she believes that the same is true of Jack. And so Malvolia agrees to a different kind of test.
She will put the sleeping spell back on Talia, and if Jack can find her, win his way to her, prove his love for her, then the spell will be broken, and Malvolia will never cause trouble again. But if Jack cannot do these things, if he fails, then Talia will sleep forever.
She agrees. And so, Malvolia puts Jack through his paces. And each of the obstacles is designed to have turned away the boy he was before. He has to walk for three days straight, each day making no real progress. The old Jack would have given up, not had the perseverance to keep going. The new Jack doesn’t. He has to answer a question about Talia every day. The old Jack wouldn’t have listened to know her dearest wish, but the new Jack does. And before he can make it to Talia in the cottage, he has to stand up to his father, take control of his own life, and commit to what he wants.
It’s hard, it’s a challenge, but Jack does it, and he kisses Talia awake, and he and his dad (who’s come with him) work out a plan to turn Euphrasia into a kind of theme park, like those old Colonial towns, and recreate the story to the tourists, and everything works out well for everyone.
Have I mentioned how much I love Alex Flinn’s modernizations?
Anyway. Checklist.
Make the characters more active in their story? Not initially, but that’s one of the things that I love. Both of these characters are passive and actively resisting taking any initiative when the curse is broken the first time. But over the course of the story, they grow into being active participants, and that is wonderful.
Introduce more conflict? Definitely. This wasn’t a case of jealousy or injured pride, but a real honest beef that Malvolia had with the King. She was out for revenge, plain and simple, and she didn’t just disappear once her curse was laid. She was around through the whole story and she had a much firmer motivation, and in the end, Talia and Jack had to prove their growth in order to move forward.
Explain the actions of the parents? This is where we fall a little short for me, just because I still find the King so aggravating, for blaming Talia because she acted as a curse promised she would. However, that characterization does fit with his actions throughout, and is part of Malvolia’s problem with him, so I’ll give the point.
Flesh the story out? Definitely. I love the double Sleeping Beauty. And watching this princess figure out the real world was very well done.
An excellent adaptation, all the way around.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Friday, May 10, 2013
Sleeping Beauty: The One Who Took the Really Long Nap by Wendy Mass
Sleeping Beauty: the One who Took the Really Long Nap by Wendy Mass
Target Audience: Middle Grade
Summary:
It's not easy being Princess Rose. Especially when a fairy curses you and you find yourself avoiding all sharp objects . . . and then end up pricking your finger anyway, causing you to slumber for a hundred years or so.
And it's not easy being The Prince. Especially when your mother has some ogre blood and tends to chow down at the most unfortunate moments. A walk in the woods would help, you think. Until you find a certain hidden castle . . . and a certain sleeping princess. Happily ever after? Not until the prince helps the princess awaken . . . and brings her home to Mother.
Type of Adaptation: Retelling with a perspective addition
Holy Unexpected Developments, Batman! Somebody included Perrault’s entirely unnecessary ending – and did it well, too! Color me utterly astonished!
But we’ll get to that.
So, as you may be able to ascertain from the title, this novel is from the same series as Rapunzel: The One With All the Hair. It’s called the Twice Upon a Time series, and it takes fairy tales and rewrites them for a younger audience, but in a way I can completely get behind because Wendy Mass knows how to write for this age group, and she does so very well.
Like Rapunzel’s, this is told in chapters that alternate back and forth between prince and princess, but for the sake of coherency, I’m gonna just do them one at a time, starting with Princess Rose.
Princess Rose is a Sleeping Beauty of the seven fairy godmothers variety, and the reason the grumpy fairy wasn’t invited is because there had been a rumor that she’d died, and as unpleasant as she was, no one was terribly heartbroken about it, or felt the need to poke around and see whether or not it was true. As soon as she arrived, however, a place was made for her, and one of the golden plates (specially commissioned for the event) would be made and sent to her as soon as possible.
But it’s no use trying to placate a fairy determined to feel slighted, so she lays her curse anyway – death by spindle. This one doesn’t give a time frame, either. Just, she’ll prick her finger on a spindle and die. Someday. Could be next week, could be when she’s 87. We’ll see.
Everyone’s in the typical uproar when the seventh fairy comes and makes her gift and changes the death to sleep, etc, etc. It’s all playing out pretty normally, including Father King outlawing spinning and weaving and sewing of any kind, but at least in this version, Mother Queen goes, “Dear? That’s a little bit overkill. People gotta make clothes, you know?” and they’re able to come to a compromise about bringing in clothes from other kingdoms to make sure everyone has something to wear.
And it occurs to me that, given that we don’t have a time frame, this could have ended poorly...
Anyway, like we saw last week, Rose grows up very over-protected, always supervised. It’s the way it’s always been for her, so it takes her a while to realize that anything’s amiss or different about the way she’s never alone. She has one friend who sticks by her, though, Sara, a peasant girl who becomes her lady in waiting.
Now, Rose was gifted with all the gifts traditional to Sleeping Beautys, and as a way to give thanks for it, she gives a performance every year, showing off her talents in dancing and singing and playing instruments, etc. But here’s what I love about this – Rose doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like doing this. She has never felt able to take compliments because it’s not really her. It’s just fairy magic, and she wants to know if she would have been good at those things without it.
So Rose sets off to find something she can do well. She takes up painting and horseback riding and cooking, and is miserable at all of them, and thrilled to be so. She may not be painting the most beautiful paintings, but at least they’re hers.
And in this way, she reaches 16, and at the age of 16, she goes on a trip to a summer home, and while exploring, she finds a visiting woman from another country who is weaving. Always eager to learn new skills, Rose asks if she can try, and she proves to be a natural. The woman asks if she’d like to try spinning, too, and of course, as soon as she does, she pricks her finger and falls into her sleep.
Fast forward 100 years.
Here we meet the Prince, who has no name. He is just The Prince because his parents couldn’t agree on a name, and then they just never got around to it, and by then, he’d been The Prince long enough that it was just easier to keep calling him that.
This isn’t the only unusual thing about The Prince – he also has to take care to avoid his mother on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. Why? Because she’s part ogre, and that’s when she feeds.
See? I told you Perrault got his crazy ending worked in!
Yes, the Prince’s mother is part ogre, and she can’t stand beautiful things, so when she became Queen, she had them removed from palace – all color and gilding and pretty servants. She can’t stand the sight of them. But other than that, and a need to eat people twice a month, she’s a perfectly lovely human being, and a very good Queen.
But all of this running around and hiding from his mother twice a month has given our Prince a pretty decent knowledge of the grounds surrounding his castle, and he has discovered something strange. In the middle of the forest, there seems to be another castle, identical to his, from what he can tell, but it’s surrounded by a huge hedge of briars he can’t get through.
The more he investigates, the more certain he becomes – that castle is just the same as his castle, and when he talks to the oldest people in the kingdom, it all becomes stranger. Seems that the king and queen of a hundred years ago had a daughter who just disappeared one day. And shortly after that, the castle moved about a hundred yards and the forest grew up overnight. The ruling of the kingdom then passed to another noble family, the Prince’s ancestors.
The Prince becomes obsessed with solving this mystery, and finds an account written and hidden in the library from the fairy who fixed the curse, and he becomes determined to find and rescue this sleeping princess.
And he does. On the day exactly 100 years since the curse was laid, the hedge of briars parts for him, and he is able to enter the castle, find the sleeping princess, and kiss her awake. And her really truly lovely response is, “Pardon my rudeness, but WHO THE HECK ARE YOU?” Which, if you think about it, is an appropriate response to waking up by a kiss from a complete stranger. Just saying.
Anyway, he explains everything, and Rose has to come to terms with the fact that the curse played out as planned, it’s 100 years later, and everyone she knew is gone. This is a pretty hard reality for her, but it is made easier by the discovery of Sara, waking up in the next room, who asked to sleep alongside Rose through her curse and be there when she woke (Rose’s parents asked the same thing, but the fairies gently told them that their destiny was to rule the kingdom while Rose slept).
So it seems we’ve reached the end, right? Curse is broken, girl’s awake, happily ever after? Well, there’s just one problem with that — Rose and Sara can’t leave the castle. The Prince can, but when the girls try, it’s like they’re being held back by an invisible wall. Rose has no idea what’s going on – this wasn’t part of the spell that she’s aware of. The Prince tells her to try and summon her fairy godmother, while he returns to his castle and investigates from there.
Rose has no luck, but the Prince does. The fairy appears to him, and tells him that there was, in fact, a second part to the spell that she didn’t tell anyone about (which, c’mon fairy, dick move, much?): Until both worlds unite/in welcome harmony/past and present as one/shall not grow to be. I agree with Sara – that’s a pretty sorry excuse for a rhyme, and geez, woman, hasn’t this girl been through enough?
Basically, what it means (pulling Perrault back into the mix) is that the Prince’s parents have to accept Rose before she can leave the castle. Which is a problem because Rose is the most beautiful girl ever, and the Prince’s mother is part-ogre and hates beauty. So Rose hacks her hair off and rubs dirt all over her face, and it works! I think less because of that and more because the Prince’s mother is a decent sort of woman who does want her son to be happy.
Now we’ve got our happily ever after, and the two castles actually merge back into one, and the forest disappears, and yeah. That’s that.
It’s a tale full of cheesiness, if we’re being honest, and there are parts where I rolled my eyes (like the name the Prince finally chooses for himself is “Princess Rose’s Husband” – gag me), but overall, I like what Mass has done with this one, and I like that she pulled elements of Perrault’s story and gave them a working and believable context. But let’s visit the checklist.
Make the characters more active in their story? I love that Rose wants to find what she’s good at beyond her fairy given gifts, and I love that she actively seeks those things out. I wish it had been integrated a little more, but at least it was there. For the Prince, I love how proactive he is. He’s curious and intelligent and seeks out the information about this castle and the princess and how to free her. So yes. Check.
Introduce more conflict? Yes, and by pulling Perrault in, too, which I feel like ought to get double points! The conflict didn’t come from the curse or the fairy, not really, it came from this ogre-mother and how she responds to Rose. Again, it could have been fleshed out a little more, but the conflict was there, and it was stronger than the original.
Explain the actions of the parents? Yes, largely by taking out the time frame. When you have no idea when bad things are going to befall, you kinda just have to let your kid live her life and deal with things as they come. I liked these parents. They seemed like good sorts.
Flesh the story out? Definitely. I was engaged and interested through out, and really pleased with some of the perspectives Mass offered.
Maybe it’s not the greatest work of literature you’ll ever read, but it’s a fun read, and it does some nice things with the story.
Target Audience: Middle Grade
Summary:
It's not easy being Princess Rose. Especially when a fairy curses you and you find yourself avoiding all sharp objects . . . and then end up pricking your finger anyway, causing you to slumber for a hundred years or so.
And it's not easy being The Prince. Especially when your mother has some ogre blood and tends to chow down at the most unfortunate moments. A walk in the woods would help, you think. Until you find a certain hidden castle . . . and a certain sleeping princess. Happily ever after? Not until the prince helps the princess awaken . . . and brings her home to Mother.
Type of Adaptation: Retelling with a perspective addition
Holy Unexpected Developments, Batman! Somebody included Perrault’s entirely unnecessary ending – and did it well, too! Color me utterly astonished!
But we’ll get to that.
So, as you may be able to ascertain from the title, this novel is from the same series as Rapunzel: The One With All the Hair. It’s called the Twice Upon a Time series, and it takes fairy tales and rewrites them for a younger audience, but in a way I can completely get behind because Wendy Mass knows how to write for this age group, and she does so very well.
Like Rapunzel’s, this is told in chapters that alternate back and forth between prince and princess, but for the sake of coherency, I’m gonna just do them one at a time, starting with Princess Rose.
Princess Rose is a Sleeping Beauty of the seven fairy godmothers variety, and the reason the grumpy fairy wasn’t invited is because there had been a rumor that she’d died, and as unpleasant as she was, no one was terribly heartbroken about it, or felt the need to poke around and see whether or not it was true. As soon as she arrived, however, a place was made for her, and one of the golden plates (specially commissioned for the event) would be made and sent to her as soon as possible.
But it’s no use trying to placate a fairy determined to feel slighted, so she lays her curse anyway – death by spindle. This one doesn’t give a time frame, either. Just, she’ll prick her finger on a spindle and die. Someday. Could be next week, could be when she’s 87. We’ll see.
Everyone’s in the typical uproar when the seventh fairy comes and makes her gift and changes the death to sleep, etc, etc. It’s all playing out pretty normally, including Father King outlawing spinning and weaving and sewing of any kind, but at least in this version, Mother Queen goes, “Dear? That’s a little bit overkill. People gotta make clothes, you know?” and they’re able to come to a compromise about bringing in clothes from other kingdoms to make sure everyone has something to wear.
And it occurs to me that, given that we don’t have a time frame, this could have ended poorly...
Anyway, like we saw last week, Rose grows up very over-protected, always supervised. It’s the way it’s always been for her, so it takes her a while to realize that anything’s amiss or different about the way she’s never alone. She has one friend who sticks by her, though, Sara, a peasant girl who becomes her lady in waiting.
Now, Rose was gifted with all the gifts traditional to Sleeping Beautys, and as a way to give thanks for it, she gives a performance every year, showing off her talents in dancing and singing and playing instruments, etc. But here’s what I love about this – Rose doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like doing this. She has never felt able to take compliments because it’s not really her. It’s just fairy magic, and she wants to know if she would have been good at those things without it.
So Rose sets off to find something she can do well. She takes up painting and horseback riding and cooking, and is miserable at all of them, and thrilled to be so. She may not be painting the most beautiful paintings, but at least they’re hers.
And in this way, she reaches 16, and at the age of 16, she goes on a trip to a summer home, and while exploring, she finds a visiting woman from another country who is weaving. Always eager to learn new skills, Rose asks if she can try, and she proves to be a natural. The woman asks if she’d like to try spinning, too, and of course, as soon as she does, she pricks her finger and falls into her sleep.
Fast forward 100 years.
Here we meet the Prince, who has no name. He is just The Prince because his parents couldn’t agree on a name, and then they just never got around to it, and by then, he’d been The Prince long enough that it was just easier to keep calling him that.
This isn’t the only unusual thing about The Prince – he also has to take care to avoid his mother on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. Why? Because she’s part ogre, and that’s when she feeds.
See? I told you Perrault got his crazy ending worked in!
Yes, the Prince’s mother is part ogre, and she can’t stand beautiful things, so when she became Queen, she had them removed from palace – all color and gilding and pretty servants. She can’t stand the sight of them. But other than that, and a need to eat people twice a month, she’s a perfectly lovely human being, and a very good Queen.
But all of this running around and hiding from his mother twice a month has given our Prince a pretty decent knowledge of the grounds surrounding his castle, and he has discovered something strange. In the middle of the forest, there seems to be another castle, identical to his, from what he can tell, but it’s surrounded by a huge hedge of briars he can’t get through.
The more he investigates, the more certain he becomes – that castle is just the same as his castle, and when he talks to the oldest people in the kingdom, it all becomes stranger. Seems that the king and queen of a hundred years ago had a daughter who just disappeared one day. And shortly after that, the castle moved about a hundred yards and the forest grew up overnight. The ruling of the kingdom then passed to another noble family, the Prince’s ancestors.
The Prince becomes obsessed with solving this mystery, and finds an account written and hidden in the library from the fairy who fixed the curse, and he becomes determined to find and rescue this sleeping princess.
And he does. On the day exactly 100 years since the curse was laid, the hedge of briars parts for him, and he is able to enter the castle, find the sleeping princess, and kiss her awake. And her really truly lovely response is, “Pardon my rudeness, but WHO THE HECK ARE YOU?” Which, if you think about it, is an appropriate response to waking up by a kiss from a complete stranger. Just saying.
Anyway, he explains everything, and Rose has to come to terms with the fact that the curse played out as planned, it’s 100 years later, and everyone she knew is gone. This is a pretty hard reality for her, but it is made easier by the discovery of Sara, waking up in the next room, who asked to sleep alongside Rose through her curse and be there when she woke (Rose’s parents asked the same thing, but the fairies gently told them that their destiny was to rule the kingdom while Rose slept).
So it seems we’ve reached the end, right? Curse is broken, girl’s awake, happily ever after? Well, there’s just one problem with that — Rose and Sara can’t leave the castle. The Prince can, but when the girls try, it’s like they’re being held back by an invisible wall. Rose has no idea what’s going on – this wasn’t part of the spell that she’s aware of. The Prince tells her to try and summon her fairy godmother, while he returns to his castle and investigates from there.
Rose has no luck, but the Prince does. The fairy appears to him, and tells him that there was, in fact, a second part to the spell that she didn’t tell anyone about (which, c’mon fairy, dick move, much?): Until both worlds unite/in welcome harmony/past and present as one/shall not grow to be. I agree with Sara – that’s a pretty sorry excuse for a rhyme, and geez, woman, hasn’t this girl been through enough?
Basically, what it means (pulling Perrault back into the mix) is that the Prince’s parents have to accept Rose before she can leave the castle. Which is a problem because Rose is the most beautiful girl ever, and the Prince’s mother is part-ogre and hates beauty. So Rose hacks her hair off and rubs dirt all over her face, and it works! I think less because of that and more because the Prince’s mother is a decent sort of woman who does want her son to be happy.
Now we’ve got our happily ever after, and the two castles actually merge back into one, and the forest disappears, and yeah. That’s that.
It’s a tale full of cheesiness, if we’re being honest, and there are parts where I rolled my eyes (like the name the Prince finally chooses for himself is “Princess Rose’s Husband” – gag me), but overall, I like what Mass has done with this one, and I like that she pulled elements of Perrault’s story and gave them a working and believable context. But let’s visit the checklist.
Make the characters more active in their story? I love that Rose wants to find what she’s good at beyond her fairy given gifts, and I love that she actively seeks those things out. I wish it had been integrated a little more, but at least it was there. For the Prince, I love how proactive he is. He’s curious and intelligent and seeks out the information about this castle and the princess and how to free her. So yes. Check.
Introduce more conflict? Yes, and by pulling Perrault in, too, which I feel like ought to get double points! The conflict didn’t come from the curse or the fairy, not really, it came from this ogre-mother and how she responds to Rose. Again, it could have been fleshed out a little more, but the conflict was there, and it was stronger than the original.
Explain the actions of the parents? Yes, largely by taking out the time frame. When you have no idea when bad things are going to befall, you kinda just have to let your kid live her life and deal with things as they come. I liked these parents. They seemed like good sorts.
Flesh the story out? Definitely. I was engaged and interested through out, and really pleased with some of the perspectives Mass offered.
Maybe it’s not the greatest work of literature you’ll ever read, but it’s a fun read, and it does some nice things with the story.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey
Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey
Target Audience: YA/Teen
Summary: The Princess Aurore has had an unusual childhood. Cursed at birth, Aurore is fated to prick her finger at the age of sixteen and sleep for one hundred years -- until a prince awakens her with a kiss. So, to protect her, Aurore's loving parents forbid any task requiring a needle.
Unable to sew or embroider like most little princesses, Aurore instead explores the castle grounds and beyond, where her warmth and generosity soon endear her to the townspeople. their devotion to the spirited princess grows as she does.
On her sixteenth birthday, Aurore learns that the impending curse will harm not only her, but the entire kingdom as well. Unwilling to cause suffering, she will embark on a quest to end the evil magic. The princess's bravery will be rewarded as she finds adventure, enchantment, a handsome prince, and ultimately her destiny.
Type of Adaptation: Retelling
Oh, Once Upon a Time summary writers, what am I going to do with you? To be misleading is one thing. But to be factually inaccurate about parts of the book? Aurore didn’t spend time outside because she wasn’t allowed to embroider. In fact, her going outside coincided with learning to embroider. And it wasn’t just needles she was kept away from – it was anything that could be considered remotely sharp and/or dangerous. Honestly, do you even read the books you’re summarizing, or are you summarizing from a summary?
Let’s just jump right in.
So, this was one of Dokey’s first offerings to the Once Upon a Time series, and it was the first one that I read. I’ve talked in the past about how Dokey tends to open her novels to this series with some sort of commentary on the nature of storytelling? Well, this novel’s was the first of those that I read, and honestly, while I always appreciate what she has to say, this is the novel where that really fits the best. Because so much about Sleeping Beauty is about how stories evolve over time and turn into legend and myth.
This book is a first-person narration, from our Sleeping Beauty character Aurore, and you can tell from the way that she speaks that she is coming to tell her tale after the events have already happened, after she’s woken up and been filled in on what her story has become. And so this great evolution of her narrative is silly to her, the way details have been changed to fit a little neater into place, the way things get exaggerated and overplayed.
So in the preamble, as she calls it, she pokes fun at that, stating that she has to begin her story with Once upon a time because that’s how stories like this are expected to start, and she wants the reader to think her story is a good one, so she’d better conform to expectations.
Aurore’s voice is just wonderful. She is spirited and feisty, and she speaks her mind. But more than that, she is incredibly conversational. You are always aware that she is speaking this to an audience, telling her story in a way that feels very one-on-one. And a lot of the criticism that I’ve read of this book calls Dokey out for this. It’s not a narrative tone everyone likes.
And I can get where that criticism comes from. This is a very different tone than novels usually take, and it’s not something that goes away. It is present throughout, so if that’s the kind of thing you don’t like, you’re going to not like for the entire book.
Personally, though, I love it. Because Aurore tells stories the way that I tell stories, and I’ve had more than one person I’ve recommended this book to tell me that Aurore sounds like me. I can see it, I guess, and if it’s true, then it goes a long way to explaining why I adore this character and her voice so much.
There are a lot of books I read and love and cannot understand why everyone in the world doesn’t love them as well. This book isn’t one of those. I love it, yes, I adore it and it’s one of my favorites. But I do understand why other people might not like it. Just to get that out of the way.
Anyway, we wrap up the preamble with Once upon a time, and Aurore begins to tell her story. And the first thing Dokey does to make me love her even more is give a point to the whole “king and queen couldn’t have a kid” mention that just kinda sits there in the fairy tale. Here, in this scenario, the lack of a child meant the lack of an heir, which made the kingdom uncomfortable, and so eventually, the king had to go ahead and essentially give up hope of having a child of his own and name his orphaned nephew, Oswald, his heir.
And then the queen got pregnant. Immediately, now, this gives us tension and conflict. Because Oswald has been being raised as if he would succeed to the throne, but now, here’s this baby, so what becomes of Oswald?
That will become a more relevant question as the novel continues, but for now, we have Aurore’s christening, which, as she tells us, we think we know the truth of, but we actually don’t. For one thing, there were no fairy godmothers present, because there were no fairies in Aurore’s kingdom. Aurore’s kingdom was a placed so steeped in magic that everyone had some and so there was nothing for the fairies to do. There were magic workers at her christening and there was a godmother who was a powerful magician, but no fairies.
Secondly, Aurore tells us, the so-called “evil fairy” was nothing of the sort. And she certainly wasn’t poosty about not getting this one invitation. No, the being who cast the curse over Aurore was her mother’s cousin, a woman named Jane who had been overlooked and overshadowed and forgotten her whole life. And as magic in this place made you into more of what you already were, magic made Jane even more invisible. And that resentment and abandonment built up and up and up in Jane, and so being forgotten in terms of being invited to the christening was just what made it boil over.
Aurore was cursed to die sometime in her sixteenth year, death brought by one drop of blood being spilled. This was to punish the Queen, giving her daughter sixteen years to live her life, as Jane was given sixteen years before being forced to follow her cousin to a foreign land. Jane casts the curse and disappears, for good this time, and the Queen, angry and hurt and scared, demands that someone do something.
But you can’t go around undoing the magic cast by others. Magic doesn’t work that way because if it did, everything would unravel. So the Queen’s demand cannot be met, and when Chantal, Aurore’s godmother and the Queen’s closest friend, steps forward to remind her of this, the Queen sees it as a betrayal and orders Chantal to leave and never return.
And Chantal does, but not before whispering another spell over Aurore, that she need not die from a drop of blood being spilled. Merely sleep, a hundred years, a spell to be broken with a kiss, though whether or not it would be the kiss of true love would remain to be seen. This is as much as Chantal can do to combat Jane’s curse, but she also whispers another key to the princess — that she will keep what she holds in her heart safe and strong.
And then Chantal does as she was ordered and leaves and no one ever sees her again. And thus we launch Aurore into her childhood, a childhood which her mother has decided will be much safer if she keeps her daughter away from anything and everything that might possibly puncture her skin ever even a little bit.
And if you’re under the impression that that doesn’t sound like a particularly fun existence, then you’re right on track with Aurore, who spent eight years under that cloud of ridiculous over-protection. The Queen’s argument is that any injury might bring on the curse. Aurore’s argument is that she’s bored and wants to go outside.
In the end, it was Oswald who turned the tide for Aurore by arguing that the more of the world she experiences, the less likely she’ll be caught off guard by something she doesn’t understand. The more comfortable she becomes with all that is in the world, the smaller the chance that she’ll be harmed by it. The Queen is convinced, and Aurore’s life opens up considerably, but more importantly, the incident changed how she viewed her cousin.
Before he became the reason she was allowed to go outside, she hated him entirely. She found him to be thoroughly unpleasant and believed that he was jealous of her, even though he was still her father’s heir, as the king hadn’t changed his declaration even after Aurore had been born. But then he went and helped her gain her heart’s desire, and he was actually the one who took her outside that first day and showed her the garden and named the plants and brought the world to her. And she could no longer quite hate him.
Aurore and Oswald have just a fascinating relationship throughout this novel, and I love it. They are both such different people — Oswald is charming and charismatic and the very image of a king. The nobles love him, and he is a true diplomat, but he is constantly aware that he is not fully accepted and that his position is a precarious one. Whereas Aurore is loved by the people of the kingdom because she is down to earth and straightforward, but she is clumsy and not charming and she has none of the social graces that everyone expects royalty to have, which makes her a very surprising Sleeping Beauty. She is not her father’s heir, but she is her father’s child, which she always used to rub in Oswald’s face.
And you never feel for Oswald more than the day that Aurore asks for permission to go beyond the palace grounds. Her father asks why she wants to, and she doesn’t have an answer beyond that she feels like she has to, has to see all of the kingdom and its people, not just the ones who live within the palace walls. She’s pulled to do so, she says. She has to.
It is in that moment that the king names Aurore his heir, even if she sleeps for 100 years. Oswald and his children, the king says, will be the kingdom’s stewards until Aurore is able to take the throne, but Aurore must be the person who succeeds him because she has expressed the desire that Oswald never has — to see and be part of all the kingdom and all its people.
Oswald is understandably hurt by this, because his uncle never communicated that this was what he was looking for, never gave any warning or indication that Oswald had been found wanting. And I just, I want to hug him so badly in this scene.
And so Aurore transforms into the most unlikely fairy tale princess ever. She goes out with her father to the villages and learns to take in a harvest and shear sheep and climb trees and spin and plant a garden. She gets brown from the sun and gains callouses on her hands from the work she does, and becomes more and more beloved by the people and more and more scorned at by the nobles.
And Oswald is constantly right in between, and she never has any idea what he truly thinks of her.
And then she reaches her sixteenth birthday. She’s put in a dress and fancy shoes and thrown a ball, and she’s never been so uncomfortable in her life, and she’s painfully aware of how at ease Oswald is when shown next to her. She overhears him speaking with the daughter of one of the most influential nobles, talking about her, and though Oswald won’t say anything against her outright, it’s pretty clear what the noblewoman’s opinion is, and Oswald doesn’t really refute it.
Aurore confronts Oswald about this conversation, and she’s angry and upset and uncomfortable and frustrated with the whole evening and the whole affair, and she says some pretty hurtful things, but Oswald doesn’t react the way she’s expecting. Before she has a chance to ponder this, however, the Bad Things start happening.
First blood rains from the sky. Then impossible heat kills all the crops. Then magic everywhere just starts going nuts. Everything is at odds, and no one can explain what’s going on, but Aurore has an inkling. The horrible things that are happening started on her birthday, and are the work of opposites pitted against each other — just like the two spells spoken over her.
She’s not the only one to come to this conclusion; several of the nobles do as well, and they go to the king and try to convince him to either send Aurore away or draw the drop of blood and bring on her curse. This is a poor choice, and to Aurore’s surprise, no one is more vocal in her defense than Oswald.
The king immediately dismisses the nobles and refuses to even consider what they had to say, but Aurore can’t stop thinking about it. And she knows, on some level, that they’re right. This is happening because of her, and it’s affecting her kingdom and her people and she has to do something about it. So in the middle of the night, she packs a bag and prepares to run away.
But Oswald, who knows her better than she likes to admit, is waiting for her. He calls her out on her cowardice and tells her if she listens to the nobles, then they’ve won. But Oswald doesn’t understand, so Aurore explains it all to him, why she has to do this, why she has to leave, and over the course of the conversation, they both learn some important things about one another. Aurore learns that Oswald doesn’t want the throne so much as he wants to be accepted as part of the family, not as a nephew but as a son. And Oswald learns that Aurore knows what she’s doing and has the potential to be a great ruler some day. And so, he promises to look after her parents and guard her kingdom well, and he lets her go.
She knows exactly where she’s going, too – to La Foret, a place that has long been forbidden to her, a forest where magic is almost sentient and ten times as strong as anywhere else because, long ago, two feuding magicians cast spells beyond their power, and the fairies, to save the lands surrounding, trapped all the magic within the forest’s borders. So time and magic are strange in La Foret, and unpredictable, and Aurore has felt a pull to the place for a very long time.
So into the forest she goes. She doesn’t know what she hopes to accomplish, and she doesn’t know why she’s there, but she knows that she’s meant to be, and from the way the Forest continually manipulates her in a specific direction, it knows more than she does.
Her first night in the Forest, she meets another person, which comes as a shock to her, as other people don’t venture into the trees. The young man goes by the name Ironheart (an unfortunate nickname from an older brother), and he is awkward, impossibly cheerful, and very absent-minded-professor. He’s on a great quest – to find the princess who’s been sleeping in the heart of the Forest for 100 years and wake her up.
Aurore is stunned when he tells her this, because she is the princess in question, but she hasn’t fallen asleep yet, and she’s only been there for a day. She doesn’t tell Ironheart any of this though, largely because he’s convinced that this sleeping princess is his soulmate, his true love, and that would be a pretty awkward conversation.
So, Aurore and Ironheart venture forth on this quest, and it becomes very quickly frustrating for Aurore, because she thought it was going to be a lot harder. She thought quests meant obstacles and challenges and proving your mettle, and all they’ve done is walk through a forest for five days at a leisurely pace.
And what I love about this part of the book is how opposite and complementary these two are. When Aurore gets frustrated, she gets snappy, but instead of getting snappy back at her, Ironheart just smiles and is perfectly polite and at ease and not fazed in the slightest by Aurore’s sour attitude, which makes it hard for her to hold onto it.
And they have a great conversation at one point about how he can be so certain that this princess he’s going to wake up is his soulmate. She’s basically picking a fight with him, and he manages to identify why, even when Aurore didn’t know – she’s scared. She’s scared of the end of the quest because she knows that her destiny, whatever it is, is waiting for her at the heart of the forest, where Ironheart’s supposed sleeping princess waits.
And what I love about these two is that there is absolutely no romantic chemistry between them. None. I love it. They fall into a fascinating friendship, but it is not romantic in the slightest, despite the fact that you know this young man will be the prince who wakes Aurore up.
Anyway, on their sixth day in the forest, they reach the heart, and it’s a great maze of rose hedges. Ironheart charges in, knowing the secret to finding the center, but he says the thing you shouldn’t say when you’re a character in a novel (about how easy something is going to be), and gets whacked across the face by a rose branch, slicing open his cheek and forehead.
He’s determined to keep going until he reaches the center, but when they do, there’s no one there. There’s a bench, with a pillow on it, but that’s all. No princess. No tower. Nothing. Ironheart can’t understand it. He’s numb with shock, and Aurore tries to reassure him that they’ll find the princess, but she should really tend to his face first.
His cheek needs to be stitched, so she pulls needle and thread from her pack to do the deed, then sticks the needle through the fabric of her breeches while she ties off the thread.
And then, in possibly my favorite part of this retelling, she goes to stand up, bracing her hands on her legs, forgets that the needle is there, and stabs herself. Not destiny, not fate, just what her mother was worried about the whole time.
She draws the necessary drop of blood, has enough time to think, Aurore, you’re an idiot, and then she faints, the spells taking over.
She sleeps for all of . . . two minutes? If that? Because Ironheart is right there, and he does all the things you do when a friend of yours goes pale and keels over for no good reason right in front of you, and kissing her is one of those things. He wakes her up, and they have the very confused (on his end) conversation of yeah, hey, guess I was your sleeping princess all along.
The rose hedge parts for them, and they find themselves no longer in the heart of the forest, but at the edge of it, Aurore’s kingdom in the distance. She remarks that this is her home, and Ironheart says cryptically that he was afraid she was going to say that. She asks what he means, and he says he’s gonna wait and let his grandfather explain.
His grandfather was the one who sent him on the quest in the first place, who told so often the tale of the sleeping princess, who was very concerned that, 100 years after she started sleeping, someone be there to wake her up, who is the oldest living man most people know.
(Who is Oswald, I hope you all were able to guess. Spoilers.)
Because Aurore has been gone both six days and 100 years. Time moves differently in la Foret. While she was in the forest, 100 years passed in her kingdom, and Oswald has been waiting for her. And he says that he is so happy, that she will marry his grandson and become Queen, and it is all he ever wanted.
And then, because she’s wonderful, Aurore says no.
She says she’s sorry to disappoint anyone, but she isn’t going to marry Ironheart because while she has come to think quite highly of him, she doesn’t love him, and when she was in the forest and the spells went to work, Chantal’s last gift was made clear to her. She saw what she held in her heart, and she knows what that gift has the power to do. She kisses Oswald and restores his youth, because Oswald is the one she loves, and the only one she will marry.
And that might be squicky to some people, but personally, I love it.
Guys, I love this book. I love everything about this book. Checklist.
Make the characters more active in their story? Check. Aurore is an incredibly active princess, going out and doing things and being a part of her kingdom. And she’s also in charge of her own destiny. She actively seeks it out. Her father is the same. And Ironheart actively searches for his maiden; Oswald would have, if he’d been young enough, but because he can’t, he trains and sends his grandson in his place. Check check check.
Introduce more conflict? Yes, and so well done. I love that Aurore wasn’t cursed over a momentary slight, but over a lifetime of being forgotten. That Jane wasn’t evil, just embittered from constantly being overlooked. It makes her much more complex. I also love the conflict within Aurore, this idea that her curse wasn’t replaced by the good fairy’s spell, but that both spells were still there, warring over her her entire life. Conflict was added, and not a predictable sort of conflict.
Explain the actions of the parents? There is no burning of the spinning wheels. There is no being gone on the day of the birthday. And these two are incredible parents. The Queen is a bit overprotective, yes, but understandably so, and even so, she’s no fainting flower. And the king is honestly one of the best fathers I’ve ever read.
Flesh the story out? Beautifully. Absolutely beautifully. I love this land and the way magic works and la Foret and the twist and how it all came together. The world was fleshed out, the story was fleshed out, the characters were fleshed out. One of my favorite things about this book was how flawed a character Aurore was. Because she was. She snapped at people and had a temper and took her frustrations out on whoever happened to be around. But she was also brave and loyal and incredibly thoughtful. She felt real. Everyone did. Just beautifully done.
Target Audience: YA/Teen
Summary: The Princess Aurore has had an unusual childhood. Cursed at birth, Aurore is fated to prick her finger at the age of sixteen and sleep for one hundred years -- until a prince awakens her with a kiss. So, to protect her, Aurore's loving parents forbid any task requiring a needle.
Unable to sew or embroider like most little princesses, Aurore instead explores the castle grounds and beyond, where her warmth and generosity soon endear her to the townspeople. their devotion to the spirited princess grows as she does.
On her sixteenth birthday, Aurore learns that the impending curse will harm not only her, but the entire kingdom as well. Unwilling to cause suffering, she will embark on a quest to end the evil magic. The princess's bravery will be rewarded as she finds adventure, enchantment, a handsome prince, and ultimately her destiny.
Type of Adaptation: Retelling
Oh, Once Upon a Time summary writers, what am I going to do with you? To be misleading is one thing. But to be factually inaccurate about parts of the book? Aurore didn’t spend time outside because she wasn’t allowed to embroider. In fact, her going outside coincided with learning to embroider. And it wasn’t just needles she was kept away from – it was anything that could be considered remotely sharp and/or dangerous. Honestly, do you even read the books you’re summarizing, or are you summarizing from a summary?
Let’s just jump right in.
So, this was one of Dokey’s first offerings to the Once Upon a Time series, and it was the first one that I read. I’ve talked in the past about how Dokey tends to open her novels to this series with some sort of commentary on the nature of storytelling? Well, this novel’s was the first of those that I read, and honestly, while I always appreciate what she has to say, this is the novel where that really fits the best. Because so much about Sleeping Beauty is about how stories evolve over time and turn into legend and myth.
This book is a first-person narration, from our Sleeping Beauty character Aurore, and you can tell from the way that she speaks that she is coming to tell her tale after the events have already happened, after she’s woken up and been filled in on what her story has become. And so this great evolution of her narrative is silly to her, the way details have been changed to fit a little neater into place, the way things get exaggerated and overplayed.
So in the preamble, as she calls it, she pokes fun at that, stating that she has to begin her story with Once upon a time because that’s how stories like this are expected to start, and she wants the reader to think her story is a good one, so she’d better conform to expectations.
Aurore’s voice is just wonderful. She is spirited and feisty, and she speaks her mind. But more than that, she is incredibly conversational. You are always aware that she is speaking this to an audience, telling her story in a way that feels very one-on-one. And a lot of the criticism that I’ve read of this book calls Dokey out for this. It’s not a narrative tone everyone likes.
And I can get where that criticism comes from. This is a very different tone than novels usually take, and it’s not something that goes away. It is present throughout, so if that’s the kind of thing you don’t like, you’re going to not like for the entire book.
Personally, though, I love it. Because Aurore tells stories the way that I tell stories, and I’ve had more than one person I’ve recommended this book to tell me that Aurore sounds like me. I can see it, I guess, and if it’s true, then it goes a long way to explaining why I adore this character and her voice so much.
There are a lot of books I read and love and cannot understand why everyone in the world doesn’t love them as well. This book isn’t one of those. I love it, yes, I adore it and it’s one of my favorites. But I do understand why other people might not like it. Just to get that out of the way.
Anyway, we wrap up the preamble with Once upon a time, and Aurore begins to tell her story. And the first thing Dokey does to make me love her even more is give a point to the whole “king and queen couldn’t have a kid” mention that just kinda sits there in the fairy tale. Here, in this scenario, the lack of a child meant the lack of an heir, which made the kingdom uncomfortable, and so eventually, the king had to go ahead and essentially give up hope of having a child of his own and name his orphaned nephew, Oswald, his heir.
And then the queen got pregnant. Immediately, now, this gives us tension and conflict. Because Oswald has been being raised as if he would succeed to the throne, but now, here’s this baby, so what becomes of Oswald?
That will become a more relevant question as the novel continues, but for now, we have Aurore’s christening, which, as she tells us, we think we know the truth of, but we actually don’t. For one thing, there were no fairy godmothers present, because there were no fairies in Aurore’s kingdom. Aurore’s kingdom was a placed so steeped in magic that everyone had some and so there was nothing for the fairies to do. There were magic workers at her christening and there was a godmother who was a powerful magician, but no fairies.
Secondly, Aurore tells us, the so-called “evil fairy” was nothing of the sort. And she certainly wasn’t poosty about not getting this one invitation. No, the being who cast the curse over Aurore was her mother’s cousin, a woman named Jane who had been overlooked and overshadowed and forgotten her whole life. And as magic in this place made you into more of what you already were, magic made Jane even more invisible. And that resentment and abandonment built up and up and up in Jane, and so being forgotten in terms of being invited to the christening was just what made it boil over.
Aurore was cursed to die sometime in her sixteenth year, death brought by one drop of blood being spilled. This was to punish the Queen, giving her daughter sixteen years to live her life, as Jane was given sixteen years before being forced to follow her cousin to a foreign land. Jane casts the curse and disappears, for good this time, and the Queen, angry and hurt and scared, demands that someone do something.
But you can’t go around undoing the magic cast by others. Magic doesn’t work that way because if it did, everything would unravel. So the Queen’s demand cannot be met, and when Chantal, Aurore’s godmother and the Queen’s closest friend, steps forward to remind her of this, the Queen sees it as a betrayal and orders Chantal to leave and never return.
And Chantal does, but not before whispering another spell over Aurore, that she need not die from a drop of blood being spilled. Merely sleep, a hundred years, a spell to be broken with a kiss, though whether or not it would be the kiss of true love would remain to be seen. This is as much as Chantal can do to combat Jane’s curse, but she also whispers another key to the princess — that she will keep what she holds in her heart safe and strong.
And then Chantal does as she was ordered and leaves and no one ever sees her again. And thus we launch Aurore into her childhood, a childhood which her mother has decided will be much safer if she keeps her daughter away from anything and everything that might possibly puncture her skin ever even a little bit.
And if you’re under the impression that that doesn’t sound like a particularly fun existence, then you’re right on track with Aurore, who spent eight years under that cloud of ridiculous over-protection. The Queen’s argument is that any injury might bring on the curse. Aurore’s argument is that she’s bored and wants to go outside.
In the end, it was Oswald who turned the tide for Aurore by arguing that the more of the world she experiences, the less likely she’ll be caught off guard by something she doesn’t understand. The more comfortable she becomes with all that is in the world, the smaller the chance that she’ll be harmed by it. The Queen is convinced, and Aurore’s life opens up considerably, but more importantly, the incident changed how she viewed her cousin.
Before he became the reason she was allowed to go outside, she hated him entirely. She found him to be thoroughly unpleasant and believed that he was jealous of her, even though he was still her father’s heir, as the king hadn’t changed his declaration even after Aurore had been born. But then he went and helped her gain her heart’s desire, and he was actually the one who took her outside that first day and showed her the garden and named the plants and brought the world to her. And she could no longer quite hate him.
Aurore and Oswald have just a fascinating relationship throughout this novel, and I love it. They are both such different people — Oswald is charming and charismatic and the very image of a king. The nobles love him, and he is a true diplomat, but he is constantly aware that he is not fully accepted and that his position is a precarious one. Whereas Aurore is loved by the people of the kingdom because she is down to earth and straightforward, but she is clumsy and not charming and she has none of the social graces that everyone expects royalty to have, which makes her a very surprising Sleeping Beauty. She is not her father’s heir, but she is her father’s child, which she always used to rub in Oswald’s face.
And you never feel for Oswald more than the day that Aurore asks for permission to go beyond the palace grounds. Her father asks why she wants to, and she doesn’t have an answer beyond that she feels like she has to, has to see all of the kingdom and its people, not just the ones who live within the palace walls. She’s pulled to do so, she says. She has to.
It is in that moment that the king names Aurore his heir, even if she sleeps for 100 years. Oswald and his children, the king says, will be the kingdom’s stewards until Aurore is able to take the throne, but Aurore must be the person who succeeds him because she has expressed the desire that Oswald never has — to see and be part of all the kingdom and all its people.
Oswald is understandably hurt by this, because his uncle never communicated that this was what he was looking for, never gave any warning or indication that Oswald had been found wanting. And I just, I want to hug him so badly in this scene.
And so Aurore transforms into the most unlikely fairy tale princess ever. She goes out with her father to the villages and learns to take in a harvest and shear sheep and climb trees and spin and plant a garden. She gets brown from the sun and gains callouses on her hands from the work she does, and becomes more and more beloved by the people and more and more scorned at by the nobles.
And Oswald is constantly right in between, and she never has any idea what he truly thinks of her.
And then she reaches her sixteenth birthday. She’s put in a dress and fancy shoes and thrown a ball, and she’s never been so uncomfortable in her life, and she’s painfully aware of how at ease Oswald is when shown next to her. She overhears him speaking with the daughter of one of the most influential nobles, talking about her, and though Oswald won’t say anything against her outright, it’s pretty clear what the noblewoman’s opinion is, and Oswald doesn’t really refute it.
Aurore confronts Oswald about this conversation, and she’s angry and upset and uncomfortable and frustrated with the whole evening and the whole affair, and she says some pretty hurtful things, but Oswald doesn’t react the way she’s expecting. Before she has a chance to ponder this, however, the Bad Things start happening.
First blood rains from the sky. Then impossible heat kills all the crops. Then magic everywhere just starts going nuts. Everything is at odds, and no one can explain what’s going on, but Aurore has an inkling. The horrible things that are happening started on her birthday, and are the work of opposites pitted against each other — just like the two spells spoken over her.
She’s not the only one to come to this conclusion; several of the nobles do as well, and they go to the king and try to convince him to either send Aurore away or draw the drop of blood and bring on her curse. This is a poor choice, and to Aurore’s surprise, no one is more vocal in her defense than Oswald.
The king immediately dismisses the nobles and refuses to even consider what they had to say, but Aurore can’t stop thinking about it. And she knows, on some level, that they’re right. This is happening because of her, and it’s affecting her kingdom and her people and she has to do something about it. So in the middle of the night, she packs a bag and prepares to run away.
But Oswald, who knows her better than she likes to admit, is waiting for her. He calls her out on her cowardice and tells her if she listens to the nobles, then they’ve won. But Oswald doesn’t understand, so Aurore explains it all to him, why she has to do this, why she has to leave, and over the course of the conversation, they both learn some important things about one another. Aurore learns that Oswald doesn’t want the throne so much as he wants to be accepted as part of the family, not as a nephew but as a son. And Oswald learns that Aurore knows what she’s doing and has the potential to be a great ruler some day. And so, he promises to look after her parents and guard her kingdom well, and he lets her go.
She knows exactly where she’s going, too – to La Foret, a place that has long been forbidden to her, a forest where magic is almost sentient and ten times as strong as anywhere else because, long ago, two feuding magicians cast spells beyond their power, and the fairies, to save the lands surrounding, trapped all the magic within the forest’s borders. So time and magic are strange in La Foret, and unpredictable, and Aurore has felt a pull to the place for a very long time.
So into the forest she goes. She doesn’t know what she hopes to accomplish, and she doesn’t know why she’s there, but she knows that she’s meant to be, and from the way the Forest continually manipulates her in a specific direction, it knows more than she does.
Her first night in the Forest, she meets another person, which comes as a shock to her, as other people don’t venture into the trees. The young man goes by the name Ironheart (an unfortunate nickname from an older brother), and he is awkward, impossibly cheerful, and very absent-minded-professor. He’s on a great quest – to find the princess who’s been sleeping in the heart of the Forest for 100 years and wake her up.
Aurore is stunned when he tells her this, because she is the princess in question, but she hasn’t fallen asleep yet, and she’s only been there for a day. She doesn’t tell Ironheart any of this though, largely because he’s convinced that this sleeping princess is his soulmate, his true love, and that would be a pretty awkward conversation.
So, Aurore and Ironheart venture forth on this quest, and it becomes very quickly frustrating for Aurore, because she thought it was going to be a lot harder. She thought quests meant obstacles and challenges and proving your mettle, and all they’ve done is walk through a forest for five days at a leisurely pace.
And what I love about this part of the book is how opposite and complementary these two are. When Aurore gets frustrated, she gets snappy, but instead of getting snappy back at her, Ironheart just smiles and is perfectly polite and at ease and not fazed in the slightest by Aurore’s sour attitude, which makes it hard for her to hold onto it.
And they have a great conversation at one point about how he can be so certain that this princess he’s going to wake up is his soulmate. She’s basically picking a fight with him, and he manages to identify why, even when Aurore didn’t know – she’s scared. She’s scared of the end of the quest because she knows that her destiny, whatever it is, is waiting for her at the heart of the forest, where Ironheart’s supposed sleeping princess waits.
And what I love about these two is that there is absolutely no romantic chemistry between them. None. I love it. They fall into a fascinating friendship, but it is not romantic in the slightest, despite the fact that you know this young man will be the prince who wakes Aurore up.
Anyway, on their sixth day in the forest, they reach the heart, and it’s a great maze of rose hedges. Ironheart charges in, knowing the secret to finding the center, but he says the thing you shouldn’t say when you’re a character in a novel (about how easy something is going to be), and gets whacked across the face by a rose branch, slicing open his cheek and forehead.
He’s determined to keep going until he reaches the center, but when they do, there’s no one there. There’s a bench, with a pillow on it, but that’s all. No princess. No tower. Nothing. Ironheart can’t understand it. He’s numb with shock, and Aurore tries to reassure him that they’ll find the princess, but she should really tend to his face first.
His cheek needs to be stitched, so she pulls needle and thread from her pack to do the deed, then sticks the needle through the fabric of her breeches while she ties off the thread.
And then, in possibly my favorite part of this retelling, she goes to stand up, bracing her hands on her legs, forgets that the needle is there, and stabs herself. Not destiny, not fate, just what her mother was worried about the whole time.
She draws the necessary drop of blood, has enough time to think, Aurore, you’re an idiot, and then she faints, the spells taking over.
She sleeps for all of . . . two minutes? If that? Because Ironheart is right there, and he does all the things you do when a friend of yours goes pale and keels over for no good reason right in front of you, and kissing her is one of those things. He wakes her up, and they have the very confused (on his end) conversation of yeah, hey, guess I was your sleeping princess all along.
The rose hedge parts for them, and they find themselves no longer in the heart of the forest, but at the edge of it, Aurore’s kingdom in the distance. She remarks that this is her home, and Ironheart says cryptically that he was afraid she was going to say that. She asks what he means, and he says he’s gonna wait and let his grandfather explain.
His grandfather was the one who sent him on the quest in the first place, who told so often the tale of the sleeping princess, who was very concerned that, 100 years after she started sleeping, someone be there to wake her up, who is the oldest living man most people know.
(Who is Oswald, I hope you all were able to guess. Spoilers.)
Because Aurore has been gone both six days and 100 years. Time moves differently in la Foret. While she was in the forest, 100 years passed in her kingdom, and Oswald has been waiting for her. And he says that he is so happy, that she will marry his grandson and become Queen, and it is all he ever wanted.
And then, because she’s wonderful, Aurore says no.
She says she’s sorry to disappoint anyone, but she isn’t going to marry Ironheart because while she has come to think quite highly of him, she doesn’t love him, and when she was in the forest and the spells went to work, Chantal’s last gift was made clear to her. She saw what she held in her heart, and she knows what that gift has the power to do. She kisses Oswald and restores his youth, because Oswald is the one she loves, and the only one she will marry.
And that might be squicky to some people, but personally, I love it.
Guys, I love this book. I love everything about this book. Checklist.
Make the characters more active in their story? Check. Aurore is an incredibly active princess, going out and doing things and being a part of her kingdom. And she’s also in charge of her own destiny. She actively seeks it out. Her father is the same. And Ironheart actively searches for his maiden; Oswald would have, if he’d been young enough, but because he can’t, he trains and sends his grandson in his place. Check check check.
Introduce more conflict? Yes, and so well done. I love that Aurore wasn’t cursed over a momentary slight, but over a lifetime of being forgotten. That Jane wasn’t evil, just embittered from constantly being overlooked. It makes her much more complex. I also love the conflict within Aurore, this idea that her curse wasn’t replaced by the good fairy’s spell, but that both spells were still there, warring over her her entire life. Conflict was added, and not a predictable sort of conflict.
Explain the actions of the parents? There is no burning of the spinning wheels. There is no being gone on the day of the birthday. And these two are incredible parents. The Queen is a bit overprotective, yes, but understandably so, and even so, she’s no fainting flower. And the king is honestly one of the best fathers I’ve ever read.
Flesh the story out? Beautifully. Absolutely beautifully. I love this land and the way magic works and la Foret and the twist and how it all came together. The world was fleshed out, the story was fleshed out, the characters were fleshed out. One of my favorite things about this book was how flawed a character Aurore was. Because she was. She snapped at people and had a temper and took her frustrations out on whoever happened to be around. But she was also brave and loyal and incredibly thoughtful. She felt real. Everyone did. Just beautifully done.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Sleeping Beauty (According to Cassie)
Sleeping Beauty (According to Cassie)
So, basically, as happens so often in these things, we have a king and a queen who really want a baby, but aren’t having one for some reason until they do. It’s a girl, and what happens next depends on whose version you read.
A christening is planned, and the girl is given three or seven or twenty-one fairy godparents, who are each to bestow a gift upon the child, but the thing is, there’s another fairy in the kingdom who doesn’t get invited. The reason varies from story to story. You’ve got the pretty bad reason – the royals just forgot she existed – and then the really dumb reason – they left someone off the guest list because they didn’t have enough golden plates. I mean, seriously? You couldn’t just go buy another golden plate? Like, for reals?
Anyway, the Left Out Fairy is understandably pissed, so she shows up anyway, in the middle of the christening, after every fairy godparent but one has given their silly gifts of beauty and grace and musicianship and what have you, to show her displeasure. And rather than focus it on the parents who did the actual insulting, this fairy decides to curse the helpless infant princess who has pretty much done nothing except be born at this point.
The Petty and Petulant Fairy (I’m not calling her Evil because in the originals, anyway, she’s usually not) announces that the princess will live for fifteen years, but on her sixteenth (or eighteenth or twenty-first) birthday, she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die.
Everyone is horrified, because geez, over-reacting much? But then the last fairy steps forward to give her gift, and her gift is to change the nature of the Ego-Bruised Fairy’s curse – the princess won’t die. She’ll just sleep for a hundred years! Because, yeah, that’s totally better. . .
I mean, seriously, if you have the power to change the gift, couldn’t you shorten the time frame a bit? Like, she sleeps for a year? But anyway, the fairy changes the death to a hundred year sleep, saying that the curse will be broken when the princess’s True Love comes to kiss her awake.
And then the king goes, “I have a better idea. Let’s just destroy all the spinning wheels ever and forget this ever happened because that will totally take care of the problem!” I hope whatever clothes exist in the kingdom currently will serve everyone for the next couple decades, because your king just told you that you won’t be making any more thread anytime soon.
And apparently, this is a king who is really confident in his decreeing power, because not only do he and the queen not tell their daughter about this curse, they’re out of town on the day when the curse is supposed to be enacted.
. . . Okay, so, let me get this straight. Your daughter is cursed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and either die or fall into a century-long sleep, depending on whose magic was stronger, and you happen to have the exact day this will all happen, your course of action is to 1) destroy all the spinning wheels (supposedly) so that your daughter will never know what one looks like, 2) leave her completely ignorant of the fact that the curse exists and there are things she should avoid touching, and 3) leave her completely alone on the day you know the curse is supposed to come to pass?
. . . Keep up the parenting, dude, you’re doing a stellar job.
Anyway, not surprising to me in the slightest, the princess stumbles across an old woman in the palace with a spinning wheel, who apparently has moved in since the king’s decree. To be clear, this is not the Grudge-Holding Fairy in disguise, it’s just an innocent old lady going about her business. The princess, never having seen a spinning wheel before because her father is somehow simultaneously the most over-protective and negligent father of all time ever, is intrigued, and asks if she can try. And she pricks her finger and falls down as if dead because she was never given the necessary knowledge to avoid this fate.
So the unconscious princess is taken up to the highest room of the tallest tower and laid out on the bed, and then the fairy shows up and puts everyone in the castle to sleep alongside her – usually. Not always, though. Sometimes the princess alone sleeps and everyone else just goes about her business, which has to kinda suck.
The fairy also encloses the castle in thick briars, presumably for protection, though we’re never told.
And then we sit and wait and nothing happens for a hundred years.
Now, see, if this was me, I would have handled what goes down next a little differently. The characters in this fairy tale are in the unique position of knowing exactly dates and time frames. The curse will happen on the princess’s sixteenth birthday. The princess will sleep for 100 years. It’s hard to miscalculate, is what I’m saying.
So, me, I’d have posted a sign or something: Hey. There’s a cursed princess sleeping in this castle. On this date, somebody should go wake her up or something.
Or, you know, at least passed the story down so people knew. I can sort of understand the parents not doing this; there may not have been time. But this good fairy? Yeah, she puts everybody to sleep and then disappears. Far be it from me to tell a godparent how to look after their godchild, but, uh . . . seems to me you could maybe be a little more involved? Nope? Okay.
Anyway, with the briars growing up around the castle and everyone being put to sleep and the fairies disappearing, the result 100 years later is that no one really knows anything about the castle and the princess and the curse. There’s tons of stories flying around, but they’re all rumors and hearsay, and honestly, the prince who finally makes it through to the palace is just trying to solve that mystery as much as anything else.
And again, how grim this part of the story gets depends on who’s telling it. In some versions, lots of princes have tried to get to the castle, but have been killed by the briars, until this One True Love prince comes by at the right time. In other stories, he’s the only one who ever really gets curious about a castle buried by roses bushes.
Either way, he sets out to get to the castle, and the briars . . . part for him. Evidence of his suitability, some might say. Me, I’m more cynically inclined to read this as yet another moment of inactive passivity, but we’ll get to that.
And then it’s the iconic scene, where he finds the princess on the bed, is overcome by her beauty, and kisses her – not because he knows it will wake her or break the curse mind you, just kisses the for-all-he-knows-dead girl – or, if you’re Perrault, just walks into the room and his presence is enough to break the curse and wake her up.
And so, with no one really having done anything at all, we reach happily ever after in possibly the most anti-climactic fairy tale climax ever.
Unless you’re Charles Perrault, in which case, you tack a whole other fairy tale onto the end of this one involving a stepmother who’s part ogress trying to eat the prince and Sleeping Beauty’s babies. Because why not?
Thoughts on this story?
I took a seminar on this fairy tale in college, so I’m pretty intimately familiar with it, and I actually have written a full length novel adaptation of it, addressing my issues with the story. And the biggest one is this:
Nothing happens in this story. Seriously. Nothing happens. Girl is cursed, she falls asleep, a prince walks in, she wakes up. That’s it. This story is boring. And stupid as Perrault’s tacked-on ending is, at least someone does something in it. There’s a villain and conflict and action. But the bulk of what happens in the tale of Sleeping Beauty we all know? There’s none of that.
Checklist? Checklist.
Make the characters more active in their own story. Seriously, this is the fairy tale of People Who Had Things Happen to Them. The most active anyone gets is the evil fairy responding to something that didn’t happen, and the good fairy, who reacts with a solution that is possibly more passive than dying. I would like someone, anyone, to do something. Anything. Please.
Introduce more conflict. I’d like something to be at stake, beyond the evil fairy going, “YOU DIDN’T HAVE A GOLDEN PLATE FOR ME?? CURSED!” and then just kind of losing interest. This is a plot that desperately needs a driving force behind it. Give me one.
Explain the actions of the parents. Seriously. Parents of the Year, these guys. I desperately need an explanation – why didn’t they tell Sleeping Beauty about her curse? Why would they leave her alone on the day the curse is supposed to be enacted? And why would a man who lives in a place inundated with magic and fairies really think he could dispel the curse by going, “Burn ALL the spinning wheels!”
Flesh the story out. We get very few details here, on what is not a very long story, unless you’re Perrault and really need to add a wicked stepmother somewhere. Give me background and detail, and you’re golden. Find a way to work Perrault’s ending in and get me to commit to it? You’re super-human.
Like Cinderella, there are a lot of novels to choose from, but the line-up for the month after careful deliberation is:
Week 1: Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey
Week 2: Sleeping Beauty: The One Who Took a Really Long Nap by Wendy Mass
Week 3: A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn
Week 4: A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan
Week 5: Spindle's End by Robin McKinley
Feel free to read along!
So, basically, as happens so often in these things, we have a king and a queen who really want a baby, but aren’t having one for some reason until they do. It’s a girl, and what happens next depends on whose version you read.
A christening is planned, and the girl is given three or seven or twenty-one fairy godparents, who are each to bestow a gift upon the child, but the thing is, there’s another fairy in the kingdom who doesn’t get invited. The reason varies from story to story. You’ve got the pretty bad reason – the royals just forgot she existed – and then the really dumb reason – they left someone off the guest list because they didn’t have enough golden plates. I mean, seriously? You couldn’t just go buy another golden plate? Like, for reals?
Anyway, the Left Out Fairy is understandably pissed, so she shows up anyway, in the middle of the christening, after every fairy godparent but one has given their silly gifts of beauty and grace and musicianship and what have you, to show her displeasure. And rather than focus it on the parents who did the actual insulting, this fairy decides to curse the helpless infant princess who has pretty much done nothing except be born at this point.
The Petty and Petulant Fairy (I’m not calling her Evil because in the originals, anyway, she’s usually not) announces that the princess will live for fifteen years, but on her sixteenth (or eighteenth or twenty-first) birthday, she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die.
Everyone is horrified, because geez, over-reacting much? But then the last fairy steps forward to give her gift, and her gift is to change the nature of the Ego-Bruised Fairy’s curse – the princess won’t die. She’ll just sleep for a hundred years! Because, yeah, that’s totally better. . .
I mean, seriously, if you have the power to change the gift, couldn’t you shorten the time frame a bit? Like, she sleeps for a year? But anyway, the fairy changes the death to a hundred year sleep, saying that the curse will be broken when the princess’s True Love comes to kiss her awake.
And then the king goes, “I have a better idea. Let’s just destroy all the spinning wheels ever and forget this ever happened because that will totally take care of the problem!” I hope whatever clothes exist in the kingdom currently will serve everyone for the next couple decades, because your king just told you that you won’t be making any more thread anytime soon.
And apparently, this is a king who is really confident in his decreeing power, because not only do he and the queen not tell their daughter about this curse, they’re out of town on the day when the curse is supposed to be enacted.
. . . Okay, so, let me get this straight. Your daughter is cursed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and either die or fall into a century-long sleep, depending on whose magic was stronger, and you happen to have the exact day this will all happen, your course of action is to 1) destroy all the spinning wheels (supposedly) so that your daughter will never know what one looks like, 2) leave her completely ignorant of the fact that the curse exists and there are things she should avoid touching, and 3) leave her completely alone on the day you know the curse is supposed to come to pass?
. . . Keep up the parenting, dude, you’re doing a stellar job.
Anyway, not surprising to me in the slightest, the princess stumbles across an old woman in the palace with a spinning wheel, who apparently has moved in since the king’s decree. To be clear, this is not the Grudge-Holding Fairy in disguise, it’s just an innocent old lady going about her business. The princess, never having seen a spinning wheel before because her father is somehow simultaneously the most over-protective and negligent father of all time ever, is intrigued, and asks if she can try. And she pricks her finger and falls down as if dead because she was never given the necessary knowledge to avoid this fate.
So the unconscious princess is taken up to the highest room of the tallest tower and laid out on the bed, and then the fairy shows up and puts everyone in the castle to sleep alongside her – usually. Not always, though. Sometimes the princess alone sleeps and everyone else just goes about her business, which has to kinda suck.
The fairy also encloses the castle in thick briars, presumably for protection, though we’re never told.
And then we sit and wait and nothing happens for a hundred years.
Now, see, if this was me, I would have handled what goes down next a little differently. The characters in this fairy tale are in the unique position of knowing exactly dates and time frames. The curse will happen on the princess’s sixteenth birthday. The princess will sleep for 100 years. It’s hard to miscalculate, is what I’m saying.
So, me, I’d have posted a sign or something: Hey. There’s a cursed princess sleeping in this castle. On this date, somebody should go wake her up or something.
Or, you know, at least passed the story down so people knew. I can sort of understand the parents not doing this; there may not have been time. But this good fairy? Yeah, she puts everybody to sleep and then disappears. Far be it from me to tell a godparent how to look after their godchild, but, uh . . . seems to me you could maybe be a little more involved? Nope? Okay.
Anyway, with the briars growing up around the castle and everyone being put to sleep and the fairies disappearing, the result 100 years later is that no one really knows anything about the castle and the princess and the curse. There’s tons of stories flying around, but they’re all rumors and hearsay, and honestly, the prince who finally makes it through to the palace is just trying to solve that mystery as much as anything else.
And again, how grim this part of the story gets depends on who’s telling it. In some versions, lots of princes have tried to get to the castle, but have been killed by the briars, until this One True Love prince comes by at the right time. In other stories, he’s the only one who ever really gets curious about a castle buried by roses bushes.
Either way, he sets out to get to the castle, and the briars . . . part for him. Evidence of his suitability, some might say. Me, I’m more cynically inclined to read this as yet another moment of inactive passivity, but we’ll get to that.
And then it’s the iconic scene, where he finds the princess on the bed, is overcome by her beauty, and kisses her – not because he knows it will wake her or break the curse mind you, just kisses the for-all-he-knows-dead girl – or, if you’re Perrault, just walks into the room and his presence is enough to break the curse and wake her up.
And so, with no one really having done anything at all, we reach happily ever after in possibly the most anti-climactic fairy tale climax ever.
Unless you’re Charles Perrault, in which case, you tack a whole other fairy tale onto the end of this one involving a stepmother who’s part ogress trying to eat the prince and Sleeping Beauty’s babies. Because why not?
Thoughts on this story?
I took a seminar on this fairy tale in college, so I’m pretty intimately familiar with it, and I actually have written a full length novel adaptation of it, addressing my issues with the story. And the biggest one is this:
Nothing happens in this story. Seriously. Nothing happens. Girl is cursed, she falls asleep, a prince walks in, she wakes up. That’s it. This story is boring. And stupid as Perrault’s tacked-on ending is, at least someone does something in it. There’s a villain and conflict and action. But the bulk of what happens in the tale of Sleeping Beauty we all know? There’s none of that.
Checklist? Checklist.
Make the characters more active in their own story. Seriously, this is the fairy tale of People Who Had Things Happen to Them. The most active anyone gets is the evil fairy responding to something that didn’t happen, and the good fairy, who reacts with a solution that is possibly more passive than dying. I would like someone, anyone, to do something. Anything. Please.
Introduce more conflict. I’d like something to be at stake, beyond the evil fairy going, “YOU DIDN’T HAVE A GOLDEN PLATE FOR ME?? CURSED!” and then just kind of losing interest. This is a plot that desperately needs a driving force behind it. Give me one.
Explain the actions of the parents. Seriously. Parents of the Year, these guys. I desperately need an explanation – why didn’t they tell Sleeping Beauty about her curse? Why would they leave her alone on the day the curse is supposed to be enacted? And why would a man who lives in a place inundated with magic and fairies really think he could dispel the curse by going, “Burn ALL the spinning wheels!”
Flesh the story out. We get very few details here, on what is not a very long story, unless you’re Perrault and really need to add a wicked stepmother somewhere. Give me background and detail, and you’re golden. Find a way to work Perrault’s ending in and get me to commit to it? You’re super-human.
Like Cinderella, there are a lot of novels to choose from, but the line-up for the month after careful deliberation is:
Week 1: Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey
Week 2: Sleeping Beauty: The One Who Took a Really Long Nap by Wendy Mass
Week 3: A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn
Week 4: A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan
Week 5: Spindle's End by Robin McKinley
Feel free to read along!
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Little Red Riding Hood Wrap Up
Little Red Riding Hood Wrap Up
So, this month, we looked at another of those problem fairy tales, those “Then I Found Five Dollar” tales. And similarly to Rumpelstiltskin, in wrapping up the month and looking at how our different authors chose to handle adapting the tale, we’re going to set aside Cloaked in Red for the time being, and look at the three novels that weren’t written specifically to address the issues of the original tale: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, Scarlet Moon by Debbie Vigue, and Princess of the Silver Woods by Jessica Day George.
So the first thing I noticed about these three novels is that in exactly none of them is Little Red a child. Scarlet is 19 and Ruth and Petunia are both 16, and this directly ties in with the second thing I noticed, which was that in exactly none of these novels was the wolf an actual wolf. Scarlet came the closest, making Wolf a sort of human-wolf hybrid, and there’s the werewolf bit in Scarlet Moon, but essentially, all of these novels portray the wolf as human. Which leads directly to the last thing I noticed:
In each and every one of these novels, the wolf became a love interest for Little Red.
This point is a little disturbing to me. I mean, I get it, we live in a culture where every story has to have a romance, and Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t, but . . . the wolf? The creature who preys on Little Red in the original story, who wants to kill her? That’s who we’re choosing to turn into a love interest?
And I mean, yes, all three of these novels also have a secondary wolf in there somewhere who fills the bloodthirsty, wanting Little Red to die role, allowing these primary wolves to also play the role of the hunstmen, but . . . still.
Honestly, as much as I loved Scarlet and Princess of the Silver Woods, I am a little disappointed that no one took a different direction with this story. No one made the wolf a real wolf, no one made Little Red a child, everyone turned it into a romance. Which is fine, looking at each novel individually. But all together, seeing the stories that, boiled down to essentials, are so similar . . . I don’t know. To me, making Little Red older and turning the wolf into the love interest is the easy way to retell this story, and I find myself wishing that someone had taken a more challenging route.
So to that end, thank you Vivian Vande Velde.
I also noticed that of the people we read this month, only one chose to deliberately retell Little Red specifically, creating a world around that story. We’re leaving Cloaked in Red aside again, because of the different motivation in writing it, and Scarlet and Princess of the Silver Woods both used LRRH as a sequel structure, fitting the fairy tale into a world already established for another fairy tale, and while they both did it very well, LRRH was not the starting point for either of them.
At the end of the day, the offerings we have on this story say a lot about how well it lends itself to retelling, which is: not very well. The most successful adaptations this month didn’t try to retell the story on its own, but wove the elements of the story in with others, which I feel like you almost have to do with a story this problematic.
So! Rankings for the month:
Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde, Princess of the Silver Woods by Jessica Day George, and Scarlet by Marissa Meyer all receive Highly Recommended ratings for vastly different reasons.
Scarlet Moon by Debbie Vigue gets a Not Recommended from me, but with the caveat that it is very much not my cup of tea, but isn’t necessarily badly written.
May’s fairy tale, and the last fairy tale of the year and the project, is Sleeping Beauty. See you tomorrow!
So, this month, we looked at another of those problem fairy tales, those “Then I Found Five Dollar” tales. And similarly to Rumpelstiltskin, in wrapping up the month and looking at how our different authors chose to handle adapting the tale, we’re going to set aside Cloaked in Red for the time being, and look at the three novels that weren’t written specifically to address the issues of the original tale: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, Scarlet Moon by Debbie Vigue, and Princess of the Silver Woods by Jessica Day George.
So the first thing I noticed about these three novels is that in exactly none of them is Little Red a child. Scarlet is 19 and Ruth and Petunia are both 16, and this directly ties in with the second thing I noticed, which was that in exactly none of these novels was the wolf an actual wolf. Scarlet came the closest, making Wolf a sort of human-wolf hybrid, and there’s the werewolf bit in Scarlet Moon, but essentially, all of these novels portray the wolf as human. Which leads directly to the last thing I noticed:
In each and every one of these novels, the wolf became a love interest for Little Red.
This point is a little disturbing to me. I mean, I get it, we live in a culture where every story has to have a romance, and Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t, but . . . the wolf? The creature who preys on Little Red in the original story, who wants to kill her? That’s who we’re choosing to turn into a love interest?
And I mean, yes, all three of these novels also have a secondary wolf in there somewhere who fills the bloodthirsty, wanting Little Red to die role, allowing these primary wolves to also play the role of the hunstmen, but . . . still.
Honestly, as much as I loved Scarlet and Princess of the Silver Woods, I am a little disappointed that no one took a different direction with this story. No one made the wolf a real wolf, no one made Little Red a child, everyone turned it into a romance. Which is fine, looking at each novel individually. But all together, seeing the stories that, boiled down to essentials, are so similar . . . I don’t know. To me, making Little Red older and turning the wolf into the love interest is the easy way to retell this story, and I find myself wishing that someone had taken a more challenging route.
So to that end, thank you Vivian Vande Velde.
I also noticed that of the people we read this month, only one chose to deliberately retell Little Red specifically, creating a world around that story. We’re leaving Cloaked in Red aside again, because of the different motivation in writing it, and Scarlet and Princess of the Silver Woods both used LRRH as a sequel structure, fitting the fairy tale into a world already established for another fairy tale, and while they both did it very well, LRRH was not the starting point for either of them.
At the end of the day, the offerings we have on this story say a lot about how well it lends itself to retelling, which is: not very well. The most successful adaptations this month didn’t try to retell the story on its own, but wove the elements of the story in with others, which I feel like you almost have to do with a story this problematic.
So! Rankings for the month:
Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde, Princess of the Silver Woods by Jessica Day George, and Scarlet by Marissa Meyer all receive Highly Recommended ratings for vastly different reasons.
Scarlet Moon by Debbie Vigue gets a Not Recommended from me, but with the caveat that it is very much not my cup of tea, but isn’t necessarily badly written.
May’s fairy tale, and the last fairy tale of the year and the project, is Sleeping Beauty. See you tomorrow!
Friday, April 26, 2013
Princess of the Silver Woods by Jessica Day George
Princess of the Silver Woods by Jessica Day George
Target Audience: YA/Teen
Summary: When Petunia, the youngest of King Gregor's twelve dancing daughters, is invited to visit an elderly friend in the neighboring country of Westfalin, she welcomes the change of scenery. But in order to reach Westfalin, Petunia must pass through a forest where strange two-legged wolves are rumored to exist. Wolves intent on redistributing the wealth of the noble citizens who have entered their territory. But the bandit-wolves prove more rakishly handsome than truly dangerous, and it's not until Petunia reaches her destination that she realizes the kindly grandmother she has been summoned to visit is really an enemy bent on restoring an age-old curse.
Type of Adaptation: Retelling in combination with the legend of Robin Hood
So, I’m facing some significant challenges summarizing this one for you, not because it’s not good, and not because it’s not Little Red Riding Hood, and not because the LRRH narrative doesn’t extend fully throughout the novel. No, all those things are true. But Princess of the Silver Woods written by the object of my literary adoration, Jessica Day George, is the final book in the Princesses of Westfalin trilogy, the final sequel to Princess of the Midnight Ball and Princess of Glass, which means that while it tells LRRH and tells it fully, the plot that LRRH arranges to is very much the final plot of a trilogy.
In other words, this book is more concluding the story of PotMB and PoG than it is being a Little Red Riding Hood narrative.
But I’m gonna do the best I can, and I’m gonna try not to stray too far from what is LRRH.
So! Our Little Red character is Petunia, also known as the youngest sister from PotMB, and one of the things I really like about the way this is set up is that, in PotMB, Petunia was six, so she couldn’t really fulfill the role of the kickass youngest princess in The Twelve Dancing Princesses, but now, it’s ten years later, and Petunia is grown and a person with opinions and she’s kind of a badass.
As the story starts, she is traveling through the woods near the border of Westfalin in a carriage when they are set upon by the “Wolves” of Westfalin – a band of thieves living in the forest, stealing from the rich who pass by while wearing masks like wolves to protect their identities. In other words, enter Robin Hood, whose name in this case is Oliver.
But Petunia is no fainting damsel, and after all the trouble she and her sisters have had, she carries a pistol and she knows how to use it, so she points it in Oliver’s face and basically says, “yeah, no. How about you leave us alone?” And that in combination with the coach driver slapping the reigns on the horses and taking off through the forest gets them free of the Wolves and back on course to visit the old Grand Duchess Petunia met in Russaka during the Great Inter-Country Marriage Swap of three years before.
Oliver watches her go, impressed in spite of himself, because Petunia is tiny and really doesn’t look like much, but she didn’t hesitate to pull a pistol on him and threaten to use it. He doesn’t know who she is at this point, but he’s pretty captivated by her.
Unfortunately for Petunia, the mad dash through the forest damaged the carriage and one of the horses, and they’re still too far from the Duchess’s estate to try and walk there, and night is coming. The guards accompanying them will stand watch against the Wolves, but when Petunia heads toward the trees to relieve herself, Oliver manages to capture her and abduct her, taking her back to the cottage estate in the woods where, it turns out, he lives with his mother and brother and band of men he’s responsible for.
And his mother, one Lady Emily, recognizes Petunia immediately, for she looks just like her mother, and Lady Emily was one of Queen Maude’s ladies in waiting. This is when Oliver starts to realize just how much trouble he might be in.
Oliver, it turns out, is supposed to be an earl, but the war saw his earldom split into pieces and given to the losing country, and the estate that should have been his is the one Petunia was on her way to. Petunia learns all this and feels awful, and promises to talk to her father about it, presuming Oliver will let her become un-kidnaped.
Which he does. In fact, he sees her safely to the estate, though he himself almost gets caught by Prince Grigori (the Grand Duchess’s grandson) and his hunters, who have been charged with trying to find the Wolves and bring them to justice. They repeatedly fail. But having to run for safety puts Oliver in a position to observe Petunia in the Grand Duchess’s home, and he comes quickly to the conclusion that she is not entirely safe there.
And this is where we leave the LRRH narrative behind for a bit. So we’ve got our Little Red here in Petunia, a girl journeying through a forest to see her grandmother, or grandmother equivalent. She wears a red cloak, made over from one of Rose’s gowns from long ago, and on her journey, she encounters a wolf who forces her off the path, but eventually, she makes it to her grandmother’s, a place where she is not entirely safe.
The LRRH narrative doesn’t come back until much later in the novel, and what I really appreciate about what Jessica Day George has done is that she’s layered two tellings of this story on top of one another. You have the one summarized above, set in the real world, where Oliver is the Wolf and Prince Grigori and his men are the hunters who “save” Petunia from the Wolf. And then, near the novel’s end, we have the one set in the Land Under Stone (which Petunia and her sisters are forced to return to).
In this half of the story, Petunia is traveling through another forest, this one the silver forest that grew from her mother’s cross so many years ago. Here the wolf she seeks to escape is Prince Kestilan, the youngest son of the King Under Stone, who was to be Petunia’s betrothed, and the reason she strays from the path is because if she ventures into the trees of blessed silver, Kestilan cannot follow her.
And again, she ends up at a cottage in the wood, and the grandmother figure is in the cottage, and is still the Grand Duchess. But when Petunia sees her here, she recognizes her for who she is, noting her green eyes and the shape of her face, identifying her as one who bore a half-human son to the King Under Stone. In this half of the LRRH story, the “wolf” who attacks her is Grigori, who wants to force her to stay, to use her as leverage against the King, and the hunter who rescues her is Oliver.
I love how these two layered versions play with our perception of the story, and I love how the roles of the wolf and the hunter are swapped, and how you can play with the LRRH imagery to layer a third series of events into it: falling into the Land Under Stone being equated with being swallowed by the wolf, and the combined efforts of the hunters – in this case, the magicians and husbands and Oliver – being what releases both our Little Red and all her sisters from the belly of the beast. It’s very impressively done, and I may be reading too much into it, but it’s Jessica Day George, so probably not.
And that’s as much as I’m going to summarize, really, except to wrap up our Robin Hood portion and assure you that Oliver got his earldom back, and he and Petunia were set to live pretty happily ever after.
Checklist.
Make Little Red less of an idiot? Hells to the yes. What I have loved about these princesses from the beginning is that they are not meek and simpering. Each one of them knows how to shoot a pistol, they constantly fight against their curse, and they are as responsible for rescuing themselves as anyone else is, and Petunia is no exception. She is smart, and she figures things out, and she fights against being seen as the “baby” of the family, and it’s lovely.
Develop the world? Yes, and like Marissa Meyer before her, Jessica Day George has also managed to work this new story into the brilliant and fully developed world she created two books ago.
Give me a point? Without a doubt. The reason for telling the story was obvious and inherent, and it was all done so brilliantly.
Target Audience: YA/Teen
Summary: When Petunia, the youngest of King Gregor's twelve dancing daughters, is invited to visit an elderly friend in the neighboring country of Westfalin, she welcomes the change of scenery. But in order to reach Westfalin, Petunia must pass through a forest where strange two-legged wolves are rumored to exist. Wolves intent on redistributing the wealth of the noble citizens who have entered their territory. But the bandit-wolves prove more rakishly handsome than truly dangerous, and it's not until Petunia reaches her destination that she realizes the kindly grandmother she has been summoned to visit is really an enemy bent on restoring an age-old curse.
Type of Adaptation: Retelling in combination with the legend of Robin Hood
So, I’m facing some significant challenges summarizing this one for you, not because it’s not good, and not because it’s not Little Red Riding Hood, and not because the LRRH narrative doesn’t extend fully throughout the novel. No, all those things are true. But Princess of the Silver Woods written by the object of my literary adoration, Jessica Day George, is the final book in the Princesses of Westfalin trilogy, the final sequel to Princess of the Midnight Ball and Princess of Glass, which means that while it tells LRRH and tells it fully, the plot that LRRH arranges to is very much the final plot of a trilogy.
In other words, this book is more concluding the story of PotMB and PoG than it is being a Little Red Riding Hood narrative.
But I’m gonna do the best I can, and I’m gonna try not to stray too far from what is LRRH.
So! Our Little Red character is Petunia, also known as the youngest sister from PotMB, and one of the things I really like about the way this is set up is that, in PotMB, Petunia was six, so she couldn’t really fulfill the role of the kickass youngest princess in The Twelve Dancing Princesses, but now, it’s ten years later, and Petunia is grown and a person with opinions and she’s kind of a badass.
As the story starts, she is traveling through the woods near the border of Westfalin in a carriage when they are set upon by the “Wolves” of Westfalin – a band of thieves living in the forest, stealing from the rich who pass by while wearing masks like wolves to protect their identities. In other words, enter Robin Hood, whose name in this case is Oliver.
But Petunia is no fainting damsel, and after all the trouble she and her sisters have had, she carries a pistol and she knows how to use it, so she points it in Oliver’s face and basically says, “yeah, no. How about you leave us alone?” And that in combination with the coach driver slapping the reigns on the horses and taking off through the forest gets them free of the Wolves and back on course to visit the old Grand Duchess Petunia met in Russaka during the Great Inter-Country Marriage Swap of three years before.
Oliver watches her go, impressed in spite of himself, because Petunia is tiny and really doesn’t look like much, but she didn’t hesitate to pull a pistol on him and threaten to use it. He doesn’t know who she is at this point, but he’s pretty captivated by her.
Unfortunately for Petunia, the mad dash through the forest damaged the carriage and one of the horses, and they’re still too far from the Duchess’s estate to try and walk there, and night is coming. The guards accompanying them will stand watch against the Wolves, but when Petunia heads toward the trees to relieve herself, Oliver manages to capture her and abduct her, taking her back to the cottage estate in the woods where, it turns out, he lives with his mother and brother and band of men he’s responsible for.
And his mother, one Lady Emily, recognizes Petunia immediately, for she looks just like her mother, and Lady Emily was one of Queen Maude’s ladies in waiting. This is when Oliver starts to realize just how much trouble he might be in.
Oliver, it turns out, is supposed to be an earl, but the war saw his earldom split into pieces and given to the losing country, and the estate that should have been his is the one Petunia was on her way to. Petunia learns all this and feels awful, and promises to talk to her father about it, presuming Oliver will let her become un-kidnaped.
Which he does. In fact, he sees her safely to the estate, though he himself almost gets caught by Prince Grigori (the Grand Duchess’s grandson) and his hunters, who have been charged with trying to find the Wolves and bring them to justice. They repeatedly fail. But having to run for safety puts Oliver in a position to observe Petunia in the Grand Duchess’s home, and he comes quickly to the conclusion that she is not entirely safe there.
And this is where we leave the LRRH narrative behind for a bit. So we’ve got our Little Red here in Petunia, a girl journeying through a forest to see her grandmother, or grandmother equivalent. She wears a red cloak, made over from one of Rose’s gowns from long ago, and on her journey, she encounters a wolf who forces her off the path, but eventually, she makes it to her grandmother’s, a place where she is not entirely safe.
The LRRH narrative doesn’t come back until much later in the novel, and what I really appreciate about what Jessica Day George has done is that she’s layered two tellings of this story on top of one another. You have the one summarized above, set in the real world, where Oliver is the Wolf and Prince Grigori and his men are the hunters who “save” Petunia from the Wolf. And then, near the novel’s end, we have the one set in the Land Under Stone (which Petunia and her sisters are forced to return to).
In this half of the story, Petunia is traveling through another forest, this one the silver forest that grew from her mother’s cross so many years ago. Here the wolf she seeks to escape is Prince Kestilan, the youngest son of the King Under Stone, who was to be Petunia’s betrothed, and the reason she strays from the path is because if she ventures into the trees of blessed silver, Kestilan cannot follow her.
And again, she ends up at a cottage in the wood, and the grandmother figure is in the cottage, and is still the Grand Duchess. But when Petunia sees her here, she recognizes her for who she is, noting her green eyes and the shape of her face, identifying her as one who bore a half-human son to the King Under Stone. In this half of the LRRH story, the “wolf” who attacks her is Grigori, who wants to force her to stay, to use her as leverage against the King, and the hunter who rescues her is Oliver.
I love how these two layered versions play with our perception of the story, and I love how the roles of the wolf and the hunter are swapped, and how you can play with the LRRH imagery to layer a third series of events into it: falling into the Land Under Stone being equated with being swallowed by the wolf, and the combined efforts of the hunters – in this case, the magicians and husbands and Oliver – being what releases both our Little Red and all her sisters from the belly of the beast. It’s very impressively done, and I may be reading too much into it, but it’s Jessica Day George, so probably not.
And that’s as much as I’m going to summarize, really, except to wrap up our Robin Hood portion and assure you that Oliver got his earldom back, and he and Petunia were set to live pretty happily ever after.
Checklist.
Make Little Red less of an idiot? Hells to the yes. What I have loved about these princesses from the beginning is that they are not meek and simpering. Each one of them knows how to shoot a pistol, they constantly fight against their curse, and they are as responsible for rescuing themselves as anyone else is, and Petunia is no exception. She is smart, and she figures things out, and she fights against being seen as the “baby” of the family, and it’s lovely.
Develop the world? Yes, and like Marissa Meyer before her, Jessica Day George has also managed to work this new story into the brilliant and fully developed world she created two books ago.
Give me a point? Without a doubt. The reason for telling the story was obvious and inherent, and it was all done so brilliantly.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Scarlet Moon by Debbie Vigue
Scarlet Moon by Debbie Vigue
Target Audience: YA/Teen
Summary: Ruth's grandmother lives in the forest, banished there for the "evil" that the townsfolk believed she practiced. But if studying the stars, learning about nature, and dreaming of flying is evil, then Ruth is guilty of it too. Whenever Ruth took food and supplies to her grandmother, she would sit with the old woman for hours, listening and learning.
When she wasn't in the woods, Ruth was learning the trade of her father, a blacksmith, now that her brother would never return from the Crusades.
Amidst those dark days, a new man enters Ruth's life. William is a noble with a hot temper and a bad name, and he makes her shiver. But the young man is prey to his heritage, a curse placed on his family ages ago, and each male of the family has strange blood running in his veins. Now Ruth must come face-to-face with his destiny at Grandma's house.
Type of Adaptation: Retelling (I feel like I should call it Historical Recontextualization, because it’s set against the backdrop of the Crusades, but given that the Crusades spanned 200 years, we’re never told which Crusade it is, we’re never given a country in which it takes place, and magic’s a real thing, I decided ‘Retelling’ was the best bet)
So I feel like I ought to start this review with an apology to my friend Drew because when I started reading the Once Upon a Time series back in high school, this was his favorite book of that series, but when I read it, I hated it. That was almost a decade ago, though, so I tried to go into the reread with an open mind, but . . . sorry, Drew. I still hated it. At least now, though, I hope I can be better about articulating why.
And the best way I can think of to do that is to explain that Northanger Abbey is my favorite Jane Austen novel, and then to reassure you that, yes, this has a point. See, Northanger Abbey is Jane Austen’s most satirical novel, and it spends the majority of its time making fun of Gothic romances and everything they entail. I love this because I hate Gothic romances and the tired and cliche melodrama they’re made up of.
In other words, if Jane Austen was writing today, it would be books like Scarlet Moon that she was making fun of. This book is so over-the-top melodramatic, teen paranormal romance in the worst way. And hey. If that’s your thing, fine. But for me? Let’s just say that forcing myself to finish this novel was a pretty big task. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
So, we start with a girl, Ruth, who is walking through the woods one day as a child when she and her brother are attacked by a giant wolf. Ruth’s brother manages to wound the animal with his dagger and he chases the beast off, then gets Ruth back to the village to be cared for – the wolf’s attack leaves her with huge scars all down her legs, injuries that it takes months to recover from.
The entire village turns out to hunt down the wolf that attacked their children, and they find and kill and huge one, but Ruth examines it, and she knows, it’s not the same wolf (because this, spoiler, is a werewolf story, and apparently when the man in question changes to a werewolf, everything except his eyes transforms, so Ruth knows it’s not the same wolf because it doesn’t have green eyes. Which I find to be stupid, but hey. That might just be me.)
And in typing this review, and being reminded of this point, I’m forced to point out something of a continuity error — we’re told later that there are no longer any natural wolves in the area, because the presence of the werewolf has forced them all away, and the werewolves have been here for generations – so where exactly did this other wolf come from?
Anyway, a few months after the attack, Ruth’s brother and cousin leave for the Crusades, and to prove her strength to her father, Ruth takes up her brother’s work in their father’s blacksmith shop.
Anyway, we flash forward several years, to when Ruth is sixteen, I believe. She is still working as a blacksmith, which I felt could have been a point of interest and used to make important commentary had it been used to inform her character at all or served any point other than being something to Set Her Apart from the townspeople and be the Thing That Her True Love Accepts later on in the story.
Anyway, Ruth’s days are monotonous, filled with working at the smithy and visiting her grandmother in the woods, banished there by the townsfolk who believe her to be a witch, but not strongly enough that they’re going to do what people did in Europe during this time and burn her or anything.
And strange things happen in the woods. There’s that wolf attack that happened when Ruth was a child, and Ruth finds a naked man on the path one day who runs away as she approaches, and the trees talk (maybe? I don’t know. I’ve read this book twice now, and I still can’t figure out if the trees are actually supposed to be talking or if it’s just narrative anthropomorphization to help set mood), but that’s really the most exciting thing that ever happens in her life.
Until her cousin comes back from the Crusades, broken in body and spirit and bearing the awful news that Ruth’s brother was killed.
Peter’s return seems to incite the rest of the action to begin. It is shortly after Peter returns that Ruth meets Lord William for the first time. Ruth is alone in the smithy when the tanner comes to pick up some knives, and he’s trying to get out of paying the bill and being disrespectful to Ruth, and Lord William comes in and goes Lord of the Manor all over his ass, much to Ruth’s embarrassment and indignation.
He’s come in because he needs his horse shoed, and at first, Ruth has no idea who he is, so she berates him for trying to take care of her when she had the situation in hand. William finds this attitude refreshing because of course he does, and then when Ruth finds out who he is, she’s mortified with her behavior, but William expresses the wish that she will always treat him in such a way.
And the whole meeting and the whole conversation is underlined by sexual tension because of course it is. And then we follow William, who returns to his manor and walks broodingly through his portrait gallery and swears that he has to stay away from Ruth because he will not condemn her to a cursed life, an oath that he makes about twenty times over the course of the novel and always breaks because this is that book.
In Gothic romances of the 18th and 19th century, you had the pure, innocent, naive, virginal maiden. And then you had the dark and foreboding man of the world, corrupted by the pleasures of the world, who seeks to lead the maiden into temptation down that dark and sexual path, the man who is a danger to the maiden’s virtue, but keeps returning to her despite knowing he will be her ruin because he just can’t stay away.
This? Reads exactly like that. There’s not the puritanical emphasis on the maiden’s virginity, and the man in question is less corrupt man of the world and more cursed werewolf, but the structure is there and fully in tact. He is a danger to her. He knows he is a danger to her. He states several times that if he truly wanted what was best for her, he would stay away and never speak to her again.
Spoiler: he always speaks to her again.
And like the naive virginal maiden she’s paralleling, Ruth becomes preoccupied with William as well, and he ends up giving her a gift, a silver cross that he urges her to wear for protection. Grandma in the woods is pretty sure that more is going on here than Ruth is aware of, and that William has a dangerous secret he isn’t communicating.
And then the full moon rolls around and horrible things start happening. Namely, the tanner who was so rude to Ruth is found brutally murdered – by a wolf. Ruth knows nothing about William being a werewolf at this point, but William is pretty sure he did it, though he can’t remember anything about his transformation, which is troubling because usually he can. But, he states, since meeting Ruth, his self-control is shot to pieces.
That’s right, folks. He is so overcome by lust for this girl that he’s lost control of the incredibly necessary mind exercises designed to keep him from savagely killing anyone in the three days he spends as a wolf. I feel like this is something he should really focus on fixing, but his attitude toward it seems to be “Well, that’s that. I’m a goner. Nothing to be done.” In fact, his whole attitude toward Ruth is like that.
And he “can’t stay away from her,” which is bullshit. I mean, seriously, dude. I feel like I’m supposed to be sympathetic to this plight in a “true love has a call that cannot be denied” sort of way, but I just think William is a selfish bastard who just got reminded that girls are a thing. Like, seriously, he gives her this cross and then kisses her and then says, “No! You have to stay away from me because I’m dangerous!” and I’m just like, dude. Lock yourself in a room and deal with it. But don’t put that on her when you’re the one who keeps showing up and you’re the only one who fully understands just how dangerous you actually are, you know what I’m saying?
Anyway, during one of those “can’t stay away from her” moments, he ends up at the smithy to sneak a conversation with her, but encounters her father, and is all, hey, I need Ruth to come . . . shoe my 130 horses! Which, I’m sorry, how many horses did you say you just had? Over 100? A small-time country lord? Has over a hundred horses? This does not seem accurate to me. But what do I know, right? I mean, it’s not like I did the research – except, oh wait. Yes I did. (For those who don’t want to wade through the article, it states that the royal household of England in the 1400s had 60 horses for personal use and 180 for carts and chariots. Which, yes, is over 130, but it’s the frickin’ royal household, with a huge and massive court and lots of traffic. Lord William? Lives alone with his servants. Wikipedia and I call bullshit on your 130 horses, Vigue).
Sorry. Tangent done. So, another full moon happens, and Ruth is attacked again by a wolf. And she recognizes the wolf – it’s the same one that attacked her as a child. And when William comes to get her to shoe his 130 horses, she tells him, and he realizes that he attacked her, and he is so overcome with guilt that he confesses everything to her. And Ruth is so angry with him that she almost takes her dagger and kills him, but instead — she kisses him. She kisses him, and then, in a conversation that defies logic, but sadly not my expectations in any way, he tells her again that he’s dangerous and she really ought to stay away from him, but if she won’t do that, would she consider marrying him, maybe?
Because, yeah. That makes sense. Dude, are you even legitimately trying to keep this girl safe anymore, or has your entire world focused down to your need to get laid? Because seriously, what the hell?
Anyway, Ruth accepts him because of course she does, remember, it’s that book, and they have this talk about having died a little every day since they met and nothing, no curse, no murderous actions, can ever come between their love, and are you two forgetting that you’ve met, like, twice, and the first time was less than a week ago. Because I’m not.
Anyway, the scene gets real sexual real fast, until Ruth plays the “I’m a pure virginal maiden and must remain so” card, which will make an appearance basically every time they’re alone together from here til the end of the novel. When they’re apart, however, they each grapple with the decision and almost call off the wedding, and then they see each other again and are so consumed with lust that they just have to go through with it.
Granny posits that there must be a way to break the curse, and Ruth agrees. She says that she will set herself up with William when he transforms next and watch him, to ensure that he doesn’t go kill anyone else. So they chain him up in the manor, and I don’t know why this isn’t a thing that’s done really every month. And Ruth sits in the room with this wolf, trusting that the Power of her Love will keep him sane – which works until she falls asleep and he gets free.
Ruth, you had one job.
And while he’s free, a couple who visited Granny in secret are killed. Ruth finds their mangled bodies and knows she has to find William before the villagers do. She runs to Granny, but instead of getting help there, she finds Peter (you remember Peter? The cousin from the Crusades? Turns out he’s been studying with Granny, hoping that she really is a witch who will teach him Dark magic so he can go get his revenge in the Holy Land, and he’s gone a bit round the bend and thinks he’s a wolf now). With filed teeth and the wolf paw from the wolf that the village killed all those years ago, he’s been committing these murders, and now that Ruth has discovered him trying to kill Granny, he has to kill her.
But before he can, William the Wolf shows up and rips his throat out! Ruth’s hero! In his beast form, he savagely murders people to protect her! That’s the way to a girl’s heart!
Once he’s human again – and through the Power of Love and Plot Convenience can remember everything! – they hide all the bodies and Ruth and William decide to go ahead and get married and just deal with the wolf thing as best they can, and that’s when Granny goes, no just take this here portrait of the guy who got cursed and chuck it in the fire. Curse broken.
Yeah. It’s that simple. And I’m done.
The whole thing is just so melodramatic and so over the top that I was just rolling my eyes constantly.
And the thing is, it’s not that this is a bad book, not really. I mean, it’s got it’s bad moments and the characterization can be lacking and there are some plot issues, but it’s not the kind of bad book that I get great pleasure out of tearing to pieces, as has been true with some titles this year. It’s more that this book is telling a story I have absolutely no interest in, and have never had an interest in.
I don’t do teen paranormal romance. I just don’t enjoy it. It’s the Gothic Romance genre of the 18th century updated for today’s generation, and I just don’t understand the appeal. I don’t get why so many readers these days get so obsessed over stories that paint the ideal romance as one that is forbidden and dangerous. The innocent maiden who knowingly and willingly puts her life and her virtue in the hands of a man who could literally kill her. It’s tired, and cliche, and it was tired and cliche before Twilight got ahold of it. It’s Wuthering Heights and The Mysteries of Udolpho all over again, just with werewolves and vampires in place of angsty philanderers, and I’m sorry, but that’s not a story that interests me.
And I’m not saying that this highly sexualized version of events isn’t a perfectly valid interpretation of the Little Red Riding Hood story – it totally is, given the origins of this fairy tale. It’s just not an interpretation I have any intention of rereading ever again.
But let’s plug it into the checklist.
Make Little Red less of an idiot? Well, she’s certainly not an idiot in the same way as LRRH’s main character. She’s not “dumb and unobservant as a box of rocks” idiotic. But I would argue that she’s still pretty idiotic, willingly letting this man be a part of her life even knowing what he’s done to her in the past. So, half a point.
Develop the world? Yeah, this is where Vigue loses me. What the hell is going on with your world? What country are we in? Which Crusade is being fought? What’s our time period? And most importantly, what the heck is going on with your magical parameters? Okay, witches and werewolves are a thing, I get that, but Granny? Is she a witch? And what’s going on with the trees? I just felt lost, like the characters knew things about their world that they weren’t sharing with me, and it got annoying. No point.
Give me a point? Yeah, okay. I didn’t much care for it, but I guess it was there. So I’ll give you this one.
Target Audience: YA/Teen
Summary: Ruth's grandmother lives in the forest, banished there for the "evil" that the townsfolk believed she practiced. But if studying the stars, learning about nature, and dreaming of flying is evil, then Ruth is guilty of it too. Whenever Ruth took food and supplies to her grandmother, she would sit with the old woman for hours, listening and learning.
When she wasn't in the woods, Ruth was learning the trade of her father, a blacksmith, now that her brother would never return from the Crusades.
Amidst those dark days, a new man enters Ruth's life. William is a noble with a hot temper and a bad name, and he makes her shiver. But the young man is prey to his heritage, a curse placed on his family ages ago, and each male of the family has strange blood running in his veins. Now Ruth must come face-to-face with his destiny at Grandma's house.
Type of Adaptation: Retelling (I feel like I should call it Historical Recontextualization, because it’s set against the backdrop of the Crusades, but given that the Crusades spanned 200 years, we’re never told which Crusade it is, we’re never given a country in which it takes place, and magic’s a real thing, I decided ‘Retelling’ was the best bet)
So I feel like I ought to start this review with an apology to my friend Drew because when I started reading the Once Upon a Time series back in high school, this was his favorite book of that series, but when I read it, I hated it. That was almost a decade ago, though, so I tried to go into the reread with an open mind, but . . . sorry, Drew. I still hated it. At least now, though, I hope I can be better about articulating why.
And the best way I can think of to do that is to explain that Northanger Abbey is my favorite Jane Austen novel, and then to reassure you that, yes, this has a point. See, Northanger Abbey is Jane Austen’s most satirical novel, and it spends the majority of its time making fun of Gothic romances and everything they entail. I love this because I hate Gothic romances and the tired and cliche melodrama they’re made up of.
In other words, if Jane Austen was writing today, it would be books like Scarlet Moon that she was making fun of. This book is so over-the-top melodramatic, teen paranormal romance in the worst way. And hey. If that’s your thing, fine. But for me? Let’s just say that forcing myself to finish this novel was a pretty big task. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
So, we start with a girl, Ruth, who is walking through the woods one day as a child when she and her brother are attacked by a giant wolf. Ruth’s brother manages to wound the animal with his dagger and he chases the beast off, then gets Ruth back to the village to be cared for – the wolf’s attack leaves her with huge scars all down her legs, injuries that it takes months to recover from.
The entire village turns out to hunt down the wolf that attacked their children, and they find and kill and huge one, but Ruth examines it, and she knows, it’s not the same wolf (because this, spoiler, is a werewolf story, and apparently when the man in question changes to a werewolf, everything except his eyes transforms, so Ruth knows it’s not the same wolf because it doesn’t have green eyes. Which I find to be stupid, but hey. That might just be me.)
And in typing this review, and being reminded of this point, I’m forced to point out something of a continuity error — we’re told later that there are no longer any natural wolves in the area, because the presence of the werewolf has forced them all away, and the werewolves have been here for generations – so where exactly did this other wolf come from?
Anyway, a few months after the attack, Ruth’s brother and cousin leave for the Crusades, and to prove her strength to her father, Ruth takes up her brother’s work in their father’s blacksmith shop.
Anyway, we flash forward several years, to when Ruth is sixteen, I believe. She is still working as a blacksmith, which I felt could have been a point of interest and used to make important commentary had it been used to inform her character at all or served any point other than being something to Set Her Apart from the townspeople and be the Thing That Her True Love Accepts later on in the story.
Anyway, Ruth’s days are monotonous, filled with working at the smithy and visiting her grandmother in the woods, banished there by the townsfolk who believe her to be a witch, but not strongly enough that they’re going to do what people did in Europe during this time and burn her or anything.
And strange things happen in the woods. There’s that wolf attack that happened when Ruth was a child, and Ruth finds a naked man on the path one day who runs away as she approaches, and the trees talk (maybe? I don’t know. I’ve read this book twice now, and I still can’t figure out if the trees are actually supposed to be talking or if it’s just narrative anthropomorphization to help set mood), but that’s really the most exciting thing that ever happens in her life.
Until her cousin comes back from the Crusades, broken in body and spirit and bearing the awful news that Ruth’s brother was killed.
Peter’s return seems to incite the rest of the action to begin. It is shortly after Peter returns that Ruth meets Lord William for the first time. Ruth is alone in the smithy when the tanner comes to pick up some knives, and he’s trying to get out of paying the bill and being disrespectful to Ruth, and Lord William comes in and goes Lord of the Manor all over his ass, much to Ruth’s embarrassment and indignation.
He’s come in because he needs his horse shoed, and at first, Ruth has no idea who he is, so she berates him for trying to take care of her when she had the situation in hand. William finds this attitude refreshing because of course he does, and then when Ruth finds out who he is, she’s mortified with her behavior, but William expresses the wish that she will always treat him in such a way.
And the whole meeting and the whole conversation is underlined by sexual tension because of course it is. And then we follow William, who returns to his manor and walks broodingly through his portrait gallery and swears that he has to stay away from Ruth because he will not condemn her to a cursed life, an oath that he makes about twenty times over the course of the novel and always breaks because this is that book.
In Gothic romances of the 18th and 19th century, you had the pure, innocent, naive, virginal maiden. And then you had the dark and foreboding man of the world, corrupted by the pleasures of the world, who seeks to lead the maiden into temptation down that dark and sexual path, the man who is a danger to the maiden’s virtue, but keeps returning to her despite knowing he will be her ruin because he just can’t stay away.
This? Reads exactly like that. There’s not the puritanical emphasis on the maiden’s virginity, and the man in question is less corrupt man of the world and more cursed werewolf, but the structure is there and fully in tact. He is a danger to her. He knows he is a danger to her. He states several times that if he truly wanted what was best for her, he would stay away and never speak to her again.
Spoiler: he always speaks to her again.
And like the naive virginal maiden she’s paralleling, Ruth becomes preoccupied with William as well, and he ends up giving her a gift, a silver cross that he urges her to wear for protection. Grandma in the woods is pretty sure that more is going on here than Ruth is aware of, and that William has a dangerous secret he isn’t communicating.
And then the full moon rolls around and horrible things start happening. Namely, the tanner who was so rude to Ruth is found brutally murdered – by a wolf. Ruth knows nothing about William being a werewolf at this point, but William is pretty sure he did it, though he can’t remember anything about his transformation, which is troubling because usually he can. But, he states, since meeting Ruth, his self-control is shot to pieces.
That’s right, folks. He is so overcome by lust for this girl that he’s lost control of the incredibly necessary mind exercises designed to keep him from savagely killing anyone in the three days he spends as a wolf. I feel like this is something he should really focus on fixing, but his attitude toward it seems to be “Well, that’s that. I’m a goner. Nothing to be done.” In fact, his whole attitude toward Ruth is like that.
And he “can’t stay away from her,” which is bullshit. I mean, seriously, dude. I feel like I’m supposed to be sympathetic to this plight in a “true love has a call that cannot be denied” sort of way, but I just think William is a selfish bastard who just got reminded that girls are a thing. Like, seriously, he gives her this cross and then kisses her and then says, “No! You have to stay away from me because I’m dangerous!” and I’m just like, dude. Lock yourself in a room and deal with it. But don’t put that on her when you’re the one who keeps showing up and you’re the only one who fully understands just how dangerous you actually are, you know what I’m saying?
Anyway, during one of those “can’t stay away from her” moments, he ends up at the smithy to sneak a conversation with her, but encounters her father, and is all, hey, I need Ruth to come . . . shoe my 130 horses! Which, I’m sorry, how many horses did you say you just had? Over 100? A small-time country lord? Has over a hundred horses? This does not seem accurate to me. But what do I know, right? I mean, it’s not like I did the research – except, oh wait. Yes I did. (For those who don’t want to wade through the article, it states that the royal household of England in the 1400s had 60 horses for personal use and 180 for carts and chariots. Which, yes, is over 130, but it’s the frickin’ royal household, with a huge and massive court and lots of traffic. Lord William? Lives alone with his servants. Wikipedia and I call bullshit on your 130 horses, Vigue).
Sorry. Tangent done. So, another full moon happens, and Ruth is attacked again by a wolf. And she recognizes the wolf – it’s the same one that attacked her as a child. And when William comes to get her to shoe his 130 horses, she tells him, and he realizes that he attacked her, and he is so overcome with guilt that he confesses everything to her. And Ruth is so angry with him that she almost takes her dagger and kills him, but instead — she kisses him. She kisses him, and then, in a conversation that defies logic, but sadly not my expectations in any way, he tells her again that he’s dangerous and she really ought to stay away from him, but if she won’t do that, would she consider marrying him, maybe?
Because, yeah. That makes sense. Dude, are you even legitimately trying to keep this girl safe anymore, or has your entire world focused down to your need to get laid? Because seriously, what the hell?
Anyway, Ruth accepts him because of course she does, remember, it’s that book, and they have this talk about having died a little every day since they met and nothing, no curse, no murderous actions, can ever come between their love, and are you two forgetting that you’ve met, like, twice, and the first time was less than a week ago. Because I’m not.
Anyway, the scene gets real sexual real fast, until Ruth plays the “I’m a pure virginal maiden and must remain so” card, which will make an appearance basically every time they’re alone together from here til the end of the novel. When they’re apart, however, they each grapple with the decision and almost call off the wedding, and then they see each other again and are so consumed with lust that they just have to go through with it.
Granny posits that there must be a way to break the curse, and Ruth agrees. She says that she will set herself up with William when he transforms next and watch him, to ensure that he doesn’t go kill anyone else. So they chain him up in the manor, and I don’t know why this isn’t a thing that’s done really every month. And Ruth sits in the room with this wolf, trusting that the Power of her Love will keep him sane – which works until she falls asleep and he gets free.
Ruth, you had one job.
And while he’s free, a couple who visited Granny in secret are killed. Ruth finds their mangled bodies and knows she has to find William before the villagers do. She runs to Granny, but instead of getting help there, she finds Peter (you remember Peter? The cousin from the Crusades? Turns out he’s been studying with Granny, hoping that she really is a witch who will teach him Dark magic so he can go get his revenge in the Holy Land, and he’s gone a bit round the bend and thinks he’s a wolf now). With filed teeth and the wolf paw from the wolf that the village killed all those years ago, he’s been committing these murders, and now that Ruth has discovered him trying to kill Granny, he has to kill her.
But before he can, William the Wolf shows up and rips his throat out! Ruth’s hero! In his beast form, he savagely murders people to protect her! That’s the way to a girl’s heart!
Once he’s human again – and through the Power of Love and Plot Convenience can remember everything! – they hide all the bodies and Ruth and William decide to go ahead and get married and just deal with the wolf thing as best they can, and that’s when Granny goes, no just take this here portrait of the guy who got cursed and chuck it in the fire. Curse broken.
Yeah. It’s that simple. And I’m done.
The whole thing is just so melodramatic and so over the top that I was just rolling my eyes constantly.
And the thing is, it’s not that this is a bad book, not really. I mean, it’s got it’s bad moments and the characterization can be lacking and there are some plot issues, but it’s not the kind of bad book that I get great pleasure out of tearing to pieces, as has been true with some titles this year. It’s more that this book is telling a story I have absolutely no interest in, and have never had an interest in.
I don’t do teen paranormal romance. I just don’t enjoy it. It’s the Gothic Romance genre of the 18th century updated for today’s generation, and I just don’t understand the appeal. I don’t get why so many readers these days get so obsessed over stories that paint the ideal romance as one that is forbidden and dangerous. The innocent maiden who knowingly and willingly puts her life and her virtue in the hands of a man who could literally kill her. It’s tired, and cliche, and it was tired and cliche before Twilight got ahold of it. It’s Wuthering Heights and The Mysteries of Udolpho all over again, just with werewolves and vampires in place of angsty philanderers, and I’m sorry, but that’s not a story that interests me.
And I’m not saying that this highly sexualized version of events isn’t a perfectly valid interpretation of the Little Red Riding Hood story – it totally is, given the origins of this fairy tale. It’s just not an interpretation I have any intention of rereading ever again.
But let’s plug it into the checklist.
Make Little Red less of an idiot? Well, she’s certainly not an idiot in the same way as LRRH’s main character. She’s not “dumb and unobservant as a box of rocks” idiotic. But I would argue that she’s still pretty idiotic, willingly letting this man be a part of her life even knowing what he’s done to her in the past. So, half a point.
Develop the world? Yeah, this is where Vigue loses me. What the hell is going on with your world? What country are we in? Which Crusade is being fought? What’s our time period? And most importantly, what the heck is going on with your magical parameters? Okay, witches and werewolves are a thing, I get that, but Granny? Is she a witch? And what’s going on with the trees? I just felt lost, like the characters knew things about their world that they weren’t sharing with me, and it got annoying. No point.
Give me a point? Yeah, okay. I didn’t much care for it, but I guess it was there. So I’ll give you this one.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Target Audience: YA/Teen
Summary: Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.
Type of Adaptation: Futuristic Retelling
So, Scarlet is the sequel to Cinder, which we read last month, and I was a little wary of adding it to the review list because of that. And true enough, there’s about half of this book I won’t be touching because it’s a continuation of Cinder’s story, which isn’t our current focus. But I really wanted to read this sequel, and it was Little Red Riding Hood, so . . .
And as an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood, this book surprised me. But in a good way.
Where Cinder took place in the Asia area of this futuristic, post-WWIV version of earth, Scarlet takes place in Europe, specifically France. Scarlet is a teenage girl who works alongside her grandmother at a small country farm. Scarlet is largely responsible for driving the delivery hover to vendors in the city and delivering their food.
But Scarlet has been fighting a problem for some time when our story opens, and that’s that her grandmother is missing, and has been for almost two weeks. The police have decided that there is no foul play involved in her disappearance, but Scarlet knows otherwise, and if the police won’t help her, then Scarlet is determined to find her grandmother on her own.
She tries to get the townspeople to help, tries to unite them with concern, but her grandmother was considered pretty odd, and no one wants to help. Scarlet’s temper gets the better of her, and she’s thrown out of the tavern, but she did manage to catch the attention of one person, a street fighter who’s known as Wolf.
So already, we’ve got these familiar elements popping up. A LRRH figure, named Scarlet, whose job is delivering food. She wears an old red hoodie, and she’s looking for her grandmother. And now, we have a character named Wolf.
What I really appreciate about this book is how seamlessly the story of Little Red Riding Hood is blended into the world created for Cinderella. In fact, LRRH actually ends up making a little bit more sense in this world in many ways, but we’ll get to that.
Anyway, Scarlet tentatively accepts Wolf’s help, but that changes when her father, who she hasn’t been on speaking terms with for years, shows up at the farm, claiming that he barely escaped with his life from the people who kidnaped him – and who have Scarlet’s grandmother. He’s able to tell Scarlet that he was tortured by a man with a tattoo of numbers and letters, starting with LSO. And it just so happens that Scarlet knows someone with that tattoo.
She confronts Wolf, furious, thinking he’s behind her grandmother’s kidnaping, and eventually, he manages to convince her otherwise. Yes, he acknowledges, he bears that tattoo, but so do many others. The letters LSOP stand for the Loyal Society of the Pack, a city street gang from Paris. He was a member, but he left, and now it seems the Pack has Scarlet’s grandmother, so she accepts his help to travel to Paris and find her.
But Wolf isn’t what he seems, and really, that sentence can sum up the majority of this book – Wolf’s double and triple and quadruple crossing is incredibly complex and complicated and really quite fascinating.
Because LSOP doesn’t stand for Loyal Society of the Pack, at least not exclusively. It stands for Lunar Special Operative, and this is where Meyer gets brilliant.
Remember in Cinder, that the bad guy in question was the Lunar Queen Levana, who ruled the colony on the moon? Well, she’s still a threat, and it turns out that these LSOP boys are hers. She’s been sending Pack’s like Wolf’s into the major cities of Earth for months, genetically altered Lunar males with the instincts, senses, and killing abilities of wolves — wolfish humans, connected to the moon? LRRH meets the Lunar Chronicles universe seamlessly.
Scarlet’s grandmother, it turns out, was kidnaped by the Pack because years ago, she was the pilot who flew the first and only diplomatic mission to the moon, and Queen Levana thinks she had something to do with saving Princess Selene, the true heir of Luna, who is in fact, Cinder, if you’ll remember my disappointment (which has lessened somewhat with Cinder’s side of the story in this book, as it isn’t being treated as a magical fix, which is nice).
So the Pack has Scarlet’s grandmother, but she has proven herself to be immune to the Lunar mind-control, and Wolf’s initial mission was to find a safeguard against that. To go undercover into Scarlet’s town, convince her he had left the Pack because he disagreed with their actions, win her trust and loyalty. Which he did, but the thing is? He also became captivated by her, which wasn’t supposed to be able to happen.
I love that you never fully know what side Wolf is on because Wolf doesn’t know what side he’s on. He knows what his mission is. He knows that when his instincts are controlled and taken over by the leader of his pack, that control is absolute and he’ll become a hungry, killing machine. And yet, here’s Scarlet, for whom he has this incredibly protective instinct, one that proves in the end to be stronger than the animal instincts genetically grown in him. He’s a marvelously complex character, and I love it.
That protective instinct is what makes him try to convince her to abandon hope of rescuing her grandmother once they reach Paris, but no dice. And so, she has to live with his betrayal as he turns her over to the Pack, revealing that his allegiances still lie with them . . . kinda. They have her grandmother, in an abandoned Opera House in Paris, and they plan to use her to get the old woman to talk.
In the other half of the story, Cinder has escaped from prison, which has pissed off Levana, and when Emperor Kai can’t recapture Cinder, Levana orders attacks on Earth from her LSOP units in those 14 major cities around the world. Wolf knows it’s coming, he manages to show Scarlet (and us) that he’s still on her side by getting her an ID chip that will allow her to find her grandmother once the attack begins.
And Scarlet is able to find her grandmother, but granny’s not doing so well. She’s been beaten and tortured, to find the secret of why she can resist the mind-control and for information on Princess Selene. But neither aim have gone terribly well, and her body has been so broken and abused that there’s no way Scarlet can try and remove her from the Opera House. Granny tells Scarlet to run while she can, but Scarlet won’t leave her again, and that’s when another member of the Pack, Ran, shows up. He kills Granny and eats her flesh/drinks her blood in way that was ridiculously difficult for me to read (the neck/blood phobia is typically linked to vampires, but apparently, it can manifest with the right kind of werewolf, too! Great!), and then he turns on Scarlet.
She tries to get away, and goddamn if she doesn’t fight her heart out against him. But he’s genetically engineered, so it’s just not going to happen, and this wolf-man is on the verge of destroying her, too, when Wolf appears and throws the other wolf-man off and proceeds to wolf-fight to the death in a scene that is gruesome like something out of Grimm.
The thing is, Wolf is still mostly in wild animal mind control at this point. He’s not resisting in order to protect Scarlet; protecting Scarlet has just become one of his instincts. Which plays against the trope, and I like it.
This is the point where the two stories converge and the series’ next installment is set up, but we’ll leave off there because Little Red Riding Hood has come full circle.
Because it is all there. There’s a lot that happens in between the original fairy tale’s events, but the high points of the fairy tale are in place. Little Red goes on a journey to find her grandmother, her grandmother is attacked and eaten by a wolf, and Little Red herself is saved by a protector. It’s all there, and not once is it forced, which was another concern of mine. But Meyer has done this incredibly well, and I am quite impressed.
Checklist.
Make Little Red less of an idiot? I adore Scarlet. She is kickass and hot-headed and a hell of a fighter. She is not a wimp, she is not an idiot, she is not weak and malleable in really any way at all. She is badass.
Develop the world? So well done. Meyer is building off of the world she created for Cinder, and the way she has worked in the LRRH narrative is just masterful. She gives an explanation for the wolves that fits so perfectly into this world where the moon is a threat. It never felt forced, it never felt contrived, it just felt natural and seamless, and I applaud that.
Give me a point? Oh, yeah. There was definite meaning to the journey, urgency and need and high stakes, and just absolutely yes.
So . . . when does part 3 come out?
. . . 2014?
Damn.
Target Audience: YA/Teen
Summary: Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.
Type of Adaptation: Futuristic Retelling
So, Scarlet is the sequel to Cinder, which we read last month, and I was a little wary of adding it to the review list because of that. And true enough, there’s about half of this book I won’t be touching because it’s a continuation of Cinder’s story, which isn’t our current focus. But I really wanted to read this sequel, and it was Little Red Riding Hood, so . . .
And as an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood, this book surprised me. But in a good way.
Where Cinder took place in the Asia area of this futuristic, post-WWIV version of earth, Scarlet takes place in Europe, specifically France. Scarlet is a teenage girl who works alongside her grandmother at a small country farm. Scarlet is largely responsible for driving the delivery hover to vendors in the city and delivering their food.
But Scarlet has been fighting a problem for some time when our story opens, and that’s that her grandmother is missing, and has been for almost two weeks. The police have decided that there is no foul play involved in her disappearance, but Scarlet knows otherwise, and if the police won’t help her, then Scarlet is determined to find her grandmother on her own.
She tries to get the townspeople to help, tries to unite them with concern, but her grandmother was considered pretty odd, and no one wants to help. Scarlet’s temper gets the better of her, and she’s thrown out of the tavern, but she did manage to catch the attention of one person, a street fighter who’s known as Wolf.
So already, we’ve got these familiar elements popping up. A LRRH figure, named Scarlet, whose job is delivering food. She wears an old red hoodie, and she’s looking for her grandmother. And now, we have a character named Wolf.
What I really appreciate about this book is how seamlessly the story of Little Red Riding Hood is blended into the world created for Cinderella. In fact, LRRH actually ends up making a little bit more sense in this world in many ways, but we’ll get to that.
Anyway, Scarlet tentatively accepts Wolf’s help, but that changes when her father, who she hasn’t been on speaking terms with for years, shows up at the farm, claiming that he barely escaped with his life from the people who kidnaped him – and who have Scarlet’s grandmother. He’s able to tell Scarlet that he was tortured by a man with a tattoo of numbers and letters, starting with LSO. And it just so happens that Scarlet knows someone with that tattoo.
She confronts Wolf, furious, thinking he’s behind her grandmother’s kidnaping, and eventually, he manages to convince her otherwise. Yes, he acknowledges, he bears that tattoo, but so do many others. The letters LSOP stand for the Loyal Society of the Pack, a city street gang from Paris. He was a member, but he left, and now it seems the Pack has Scarlet’s grandmother, so she accepts his help to travel to Paris and find her.
But Wolf isn’t what he seems, and really, that sentence can sum up the majority of this book – Wolf’s double and triple and quadruple crossing is incredibly complex and complicated and really quite fascinating.
Because LSOP doesn’t stand for Loyal Society of the Pack, at least not exclusively. It stands for Lunar Special Operative, and this is where Meyer gets brilliant.
Remember in Cinder, that the bad guy in question was the Lunar Queen Levana, who ruled the colony on the moon? Well, she’s still a threat, and it turns out that these LSOP boys are hers. She’s been sending Pack’s like Wolf’s into the major cities of Earth for months, genetically altered Lunar males with the instincts, senses, and killing abilities of wolves — wolfish humans, connected to the moon? LRRH meets the Lunar Chronicles universe seamlessly.
Scarlet’s grandmother, it turns out, was kidnaped by the Pack because years ago, she was the pilot who flew the first and only diplomatic mission to the moon, and Queen Levana thinks she had something to do with saving Princess Selene, the true heir of Luna, who is in fact, Cinder, if you’ll remember my disappointment (which has lessened somewhat with Cinder’s side of the story in this book, as it isn’t being treated as a magical fix, which is nice).
So the Pack has Scarlet’s grandmother, but she has proven herself to be immune to the Lunar mind-control, and Wolf’s initial mission was to find a safeguard against that. To go undercover into Scarlet’s town, convince her he had left the Pack because he disagreed with their actions, win her trust and loyalty. Which he did, but the thing is? He also became captivated by her, which wasn’t supposed to be able to happen.
I love that you never fully know what side Wolf is on because Wolf doesn’t know what side he’s on. He knows what his mission is. He knows that when his instincts are controlled and taken over by the leader of his pack, that control is absolute and he’ll become a hungry, killing machine. And yet, here’s Scarlet, for whom he has this incredibly protective instinct, one that proves in the end to be stronger than the animal instincts genetically grown in him. He’s a marvelously complex character, and I love it.
That protective instinct is what makes him try to convince her to abandon hope of rescuing her grandmother once they reach Paris, but no dice. And so, she has to live with his betrayal as he turns her over to the Pack, revealing that his allegiances still lie with them . . . kinda. They have her grandmother, in an abandoned Opera House in Paris, and they plan to use her to get the old woman to talk.
In the other half of the story, Cinder has escaped from prison, which has pissed off Levana, and when Emperor Kai can’t recapture Cinder, Levana orders attacks on Earth from her LSOP units in those 14 major cities around the world. Wolf knows it’s coming, he manages to show Scarlet (and us) that he’s still on her side by getting her an ID chip that will allow her to find her grandmother once the attack begins.
And Scarlet is able to find her grandmother, but granny’s not doing so well. She’s been beaten and tortured, to find the secret of why she can resist the mind-control and for information on Princess Selene. But neither aim have gone terribly well, and her body has been so broken and abused that there’s no way Scarlet can try and remove her from the Opera House. Granny tells Scarlet to run while she can, but Scarlet won’t leave her again, and that’s when another member of the Pack, Ran, shows up. He kills Granny and eats her flesh/drinks her blood in way that was ridiculously difficult for me to read (the neck/blood phobia is typically linked to vampires, but apparently, it can manifest with the right kind of werewolf, too! Great!), and then he turns on Scarlet.
She tries to get away, and goddamn if she doesn’t fight her heart out against him. But he’s genetically engineered, so it’s just not going to happen, and this wolf-man is on the verge of destroying her, too, when Wolf appears and throws the other wolf-man off and proceeds to wolf-fight to the death in a scene that is gruesome like something out of Grimm.
The thing is, Wolf is still mostly in wild animal mind control at this point. He’s not resisting in order to protect Scarlet; protecting Scarlet has just become one of his instincts. Which plays against the trope, and I like it.
This is the point where the two stories converge and the series’ next installment is set up, but we’ll leave off there because Little Red Riding Hood has come full circle.
Because it is all there. There’s a lot that happens in between the original fairy tale’s events, but the high points of the fairy tale are in place. Little Red goes on a journey to find her grandmother, her grandmother is attacked and eaten by a wolf, and Little Red herself is saved by a protector. It’s all there, and not once is it forced, which was another concern of mine. But Meyer has done this incredibly well, and I am quite impressed.
Checklist.
Make Little Red less of an idiot? I adore Scarlet. She is kickass and hot-headed and a hell of a fighter. She is not a wimp, she is not an idiot, she is not weak and malleable in really any way at all. She is badass.
Develop the world? So well done. Meyer is building off of the world she created for Cinder, and the way she has worked in the LRRH narrative is just masterful. She gives an explanation for the wolves that fits so perfectly into this world where the moon is a threat. It never felt forced, it never felt contrived, it just felt natural and seamless, and I applaud that.
Give me a point? Oh, yeah. There was definite meaning to the journey, urgency and need and high stakes, and just absolutely yes.
So . . . when does part 3 come out?
. . . 2014?
Damn.
Guest Post! Hoodwinked with Jesse
Fairy Tale Reviews: Hoodwinked! by Jesse Coder
Hail and well met, friends. So, I am a big ol’ fan of fairy tales that have been deconstructed and told from another perspective. This penchant of mine began in the early 90’s when I first read Jon Scieszka’s The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales, a short children’s book of parody fairy tales, including such stories as “Cinderrumpelstilskin,” “Chicken Licken,” and yes, “Little Red Running Shorts.” My love for this type of story continued with some of Scieszka’s other books, like The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Frog Prince, Continued (seriously, if you have not read any of Scieszka’s books, give them a look) and has continued to this day. Into the Woods is one of my favorite theatre productions ever, I adore the Maynard Moose Tales by Willy Claflin, and I greatly enjoy Enchanted, which is, in my opinion, one of Disney’s most underrated movies.
And yet, for as much as I love this type of story, I had not seen Hoodwinked! until about 6 or 7 years after it came out. This was not a movie that advertised itself well. The trailers looked dumb, the animation looked really half-assed, and it just seemed generally unappealing. I probably would have never seen the movie at all if not for my friend Jethro, and when I saw this movie for the first time, it reminded me of something. You see, no matter what your preconceptions are, no matter how well you might think you have something pegged, no matter how often your instincts about your entertainment are proven correct, you should at least give everything a chance, because stuff can still surprise you. Hoodwinked! is not only one of my favorite fairy tale adaptations; it is also a proud member of my personal favorite-movies-ever list. So let’s take a look at the film, shall we?
Hoodwinked! begins with the climax. Interesting choice. Okay, it doesn’t begin with THE climax, just A climax. Specifically, the climax of the Red Riding Hood story with which we are all familiar. Red Riding Hood enters her granny’s house and finds the wolf in her grandmother’s bed, wearing a conveniently provided costume, complete with a novelty mask. Where he got that, we don’t know. At the moment. More on that shortly. They do that whole “what big blanks, the better to blank you with” deal (wow, that sounds really bad when worded like that) and the Wolf swiftly loses his cool. He and Red square off, Granny stumbles out of the closet all tied up, and the Woodsman bursts through a window, swinging his axe and yelling like a crazy person. The title screen then pops up, and we cut to shortly thereafter, where the police have the place surrounded and cordoned off, with Red, Granny, the Wolf, and the Woodsman all in custody. The police chief, a grizzly bear, decides to just take them all downtown, though as one of the officers points out, they don’t have a downtown, this being the woods and all. But before he can do so, a famous frog detective by the name of Nicky Flippers stops by to get to the bottom of the case. He begins to interrogate each of the suspects to get their respective versions of the story, beginning with Red.
She begins her day like any other, making deliveries for her Granny Puckett’s sweets shop. See, the forest in which this story takes place has something of a pastry-based economy, where the only goods that ever seem to get exchanged are cakes, crumpets, muffins, things of that sort. And schnitzel. But we’ll get to that. Red spends a short amount of time talking to a bunny named Boingo, who tells her that he is no longer able to make deliveries for the Muffin Man. This is because the Muffin Man is the latest victim of a criminal known as the Goody Bandit, who has been stealing recipes all over the forest, putting everyone out of business. Red decides to take the recipe book from her shop and make the dangerous trip up the mountain to her Granny’s house, where she believes that the recipes will be safe. She disguises the recipes within a fake basket of goodies and takes a short cable car ride towards the mountain peaks, but ends up accidentally falling out of the car and landing completely unharmed in the middle of the woods, because this is a cartoon, and you can do things like that. She encounters the Wolf, who asks her a bunch of questions and acts generally suspicious before attempting to take the basket from her. She proceeds to beat the crap out of him and escapes by tricking him into falling into the river. Awesome. She then finds a path up the mountain and encounters Japeth the mountain goat. And please, if you go the rest of your life without seeing Hoodwinked!, please at least watch this one scene. It’s edited for time; it’ll only take you three and a half minutes, and you will be glad you watched it. Just trust me, no summarization could possibly convey the humor of this scene adequately. Go on, watch it. I’ll wait.
No, seriously, I’ll wait. This post will still be here in three and a half minutes. Go.
…Did you watch it? I hope so, because all I am going to say is, “I know! Amazing, right?” And you’ll need to know what happens in that scene to understand some of the stuff I talk about in the rest of this post. No, I am not giving you a choice. Watch the damn scene.
Red then arrives at Granny Puckett’s house and the opening climax happens again, albeit primarily from Red’s point of view. The detective then begins to question the Wolf, because there are a few distinct holes in Red’s telling of the story. The Wolf, as it turns out, is actually an investigative reporter who formerly worked on the old Stiltskin case, chasing down leads on his real name. Cute. He is currently investigating the Goody Bandit case, and believes that Red is a prime suspect, since more goodies pass through her hands than anyone else in the forest. He follows her around looking for evidence, and approaches her in the woods to ask her the questions we saw him asking earlier in the movie. Through this, we get new insight into the events of the scene in question. For instance, Red heard him growling before coming out of the bushes, but it was really his stomach growling because he skipped lunch. Also, his supposed “attack” on her was actually just him crying out in pain as his tail gets caught in his photographer’s camera winder. The reason he asks questions of her is not because he wants to eat her Granny, but because he is a reporter. The reason he tries to steal the basket is because he thinks the stolen recipes are inside. That sort of thing. We also learn why the track that Red was on earlier was blown out. (Told you you’d need to watch that scene.) He then shows up at Granny Puckett’s cottage looking for more clues. In an attempt to get some answers out of Red, he disguises himself using some novelty Granny Puckett merchandise (remember, she runs a famous sweets shop) and the opening climax plays again from yet another perspective.
As with Red’s story, there are still some holes left over, so the Woodsman is questioned, and as it turns out, he actually has very little to do with the story at hand. He’s not really a woodsman; he’s a struggling actor named Kirk who tried out for a part in a commercial for Paul’s Bunion Cream. His day job is driving a schnitzel truck for a bunch of nightmare fuel children. He got a callback for the audition and was in the forest doing a bit of method acting when he chopped down a particularly large tree and ended up accidentally on top of it. He rolled down a hill and crashed through Granny Puckett’s window, screaming in terror. Like you do.
With Kirk not being much help, it’s Granny’s turn to be questioned, and she confesses her big secret: She is an extreme sports junkie that goes by the handle of “Triple G.” I am so not even kidding. She is in the middle of competing in a high-speed downhill ski race when she is attacked by the “European team,” a team secretly made up of mercenaries sent by the Goody Bandit to put Granny out of commission. If you haven’t yet figured this out, this movie is kind of insane. To get rid of them, she uses a few grenades (because of course she has grenades) to cause the avalanche that almost inadvertently killed Red (I really wasn’t kidding when I said you would need to see that scene) and parachutes down to her cottage. She accidentally lands in the chimney, gets tangled up in the parachute, and stumbles into the closet, which is why she is tied up in the opening climax.
With the questioning done, Nicky Flippers considers the evidence, while Red slips away to have an existential crisis about what it actually means to be a Puckett, since basically everything she knew about her grandmother is a lie. This is honestly the weakest part of the movie, and while it’s mostly played for laughs, it’s still kind of forced. But it’s only a small flaw in an otherwise solid movie. Nicky puts everything together and deduces that the Goody Bandit is actually the rabbit Boingo, since he was mentioned in all their stories at some point. It’s more complicated than that, but this is a summation, after all. Suffice it to say that you pretty much knew it was going to be him from the beginning, given that he was voiced by Andy Dick. See, Boingo was sick of working as a low-rate peon for the likes of Granny and the Muffin Man, so his plan is to steal every recipe in the woods, then blow up the entire forest and build a massive factory, where he will put addictive chemicals into his sweets and take over the market. Yeah…
Um, Boingo, I get that you’re the cartoonishly evil villain and everything, but how exactly do you plan on controlling the entire market for sweets when you’re about to blow up the forest that the market exists to serve? I don’t care how addictive your goodies are; you can’t sell cookies to smoking piles of rubble and charred flesh. You just don’t seem to have really thought this one through, is all I’m saying. My advice is to not be voiced by Andy Dick if you can help it; he doesn’t really possess the ability to play characters with actual dimension.
So Red confronts Boingo, but it turns out that he knows ear-based kung fu, so he beats her and straps her into the cable car that is set to blow the forest sky-high. If it seems like my descriptions are a little dry here, please understand that it is only because this is the kind of movie where such bizarre things happen that I think the best way to make it entertaining is to just tell you what happens and let the events speak for themselves. Luckily, the Wolf, Kirk, and Granny are able to mount a rescue, since the cops have already gone in the wrong direction, expecting to find the Goody Bandit robbing Red’s cottage. The cable car is sent down the mountain, but Red manages to free herself from her restraints as Granny grinds down the rail on a muffin pan to help her escape. They free the cable car from the line, and it falls into the river, and since the explosives powerful enough to level a forest were underwater when they went off, no harm is done. Cartoon, remember? The villains are captured and sent to prison, the recipes are returned, and Nicky Flippers invites our protagonists to join a secret team that travels the world ensuring that stories have happy endings. And our movie comes to a close.
Hoodwinked! is a movie that only exists because of a lot of luck. Its animation is distinctly subpar, the result of a less than 8 million dollar budget, which is pocket change in the world of animation. But the animation they could afford is used to great effect. It may not look smooth overall, but each character is animated with a distinct personality and the comedic timing is flawless. This is a movie that was made not because some big studio thought it would make a ton of money, but because a tiny team of creative people knew they had a good idea and fought tooth and nail to make it happen. It had a fantastic cast of voice actors, including the talents of Glenn Close, Anne Hathaway, Patrick Warburton, Jim Belushi, and many others. But does it hit the important points on Cassie’s list?
1. Make Little Red less of an idiot. Absolutely. She is portrayed as very intelligent, independent, and able to take care of herself, as well as being much more proactive. It’s her idea to take the recipes to Granny for safekeeping, it’s her that confronts the villain first, and thankfully, she also didn’t fall for the Wolf’s disguise. She just wanted to keep him talking long enough to get him to incriminate himself, since she thinks he might be the Goody Bandit. She has a distinct character arc, if a relatively small one, and was a very enjoyable protagonist.
2. Develop the world. Yes. The forest has a defined geography, culture, and even an economy. It’s not just the wolves who talk; it’s all the animals, to the point that humans are actually a very small minority. The wolf doesn’t want to eat the humans; he wants to get a scoop on the Goody Bandit. The wolf isn’t mistaken for Granny; that is an act on Red’s part. A little girl is allowed to go by herself into the woods because the animals are all completely sentient and possessed of human-level intelligence, so they are safe to interact with unless they happen to be evil. The only question that isn’t really answered is what the carnivorous animals eat. It’s sort of implied that they do get hungry for meat, but we can probably just assume that they subsist mainly on sweets, just like everyone else.
3. Give me a point. Yes. In fact, that is the whole idea behind the movie: To give the original story a point by looking at the perspectives of each of the characters involved and figure out what is really going on with the story at hand. The reason we are telling this story is to finish telling the story. If that makes sense. There are even little messages about growing up and moving on, as well as teaching the value of honesty. Plus a message about being prepared. Quite well done.
As I have said, Hoodwinked! is not a movie that I expected to enjoy. But as I sit before you, behind the words and lines of code, through the tubes of the Internet and back onto my computer where I am typing this long before you will see it, I say to you that despite its limitations, it is brilliantly constructed, brilliantly acted, and it is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen in my entire life. Do yourself a favor and see it at least once. I guarantee that you will not regret it. Or at least watch that one scene. The link’s still up there, if you haven’t looked already.
…Do it.
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