Sine Nomine

LBD Fic: Words, Words, Words

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:51:42 -0400

So, I saw people commenting on the dwindling of LBD fic, which I have also noticed. So it prompted me to finally go and finish this thing I’ve been working on for a couple months now.

I wouldn’t jump right to calling it Dizzie fluff, but it is something.

Words, Words, Words

Lizzie considers herself to be a woman of words, but when the time comes to let William Darcy know how she feels, she abandons the words that have served her so well.

Fairy Tale Reviews: Sleeping Beauty: The One Who Took the Really Long Nap

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:59:01 -0400

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.

"Most of us were raised to think love is fire, passion, and prolonged bouts of giddiness and strained..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:51:56 -0400

“Most of us were raised to think love is fire, passion, and prolonged bouts of giddiness and strained emotions. The quieter kind of love looks kinda boring on the surface, even cool-hearted. Nobody wants that at first. Some people never learn how wonderful it is to be friends with a lover or spouse, to know that here is someone you can be yourself around, and they will love you anyway, sometimes not in spite of your worse characteristics, but because of them. That kind of lover will stay with you through thick and thin, will make you feel valued always, and will make any disastrous occasion seem less so because you are with that person.”

- Tamora Pierce (source)

________________________________________________________________

I’m just rediscovering these books and this woman after about two and a half years of developing emotionally and personally (and falling in love). Turns out, hers are the books I want my future children (especially daughters) to read not just because they’re exciting and well-written, but because the characters make good value judgments and are good role models not just for how to behave, but how to treat others.

(via letmedicinebethyfood)

I adore Tamora Pierce for so many reasons, and this is one of them.

Sine Nomine: Why a Certain Reaction to the TfiOS Casting is Ridiculous

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:28:17 -0400

Sine Nomine: Why a Certain Reaction to the TfiOS Casting is Ridiculous:

drummerjag:

intelligencehavingfun:

So, I’m seeing a LOT of people reacting to the casting of Augustus Waters in the TFiOS movie with “Oh, but he plays Shailene’s brother in Divergent, and that’s gonna be so weird, to see them as love interests, like watching incest!”

…Um, guys? You realize that they’re actors, right? That this…

Yes. Exactly. I was in a production of Children of Eden my freshman year where I played Abel and then, two years later, I was in a production of Oklahoma where I played Ali Hakim. The girl who played my mother in Children of Eden when on to play Ado Annie with me in Oklahoma. And it wasn’t weird because we’re actors. I really don’t understand people sometimes.

Let’s be honest: when you do theatre for an extended period of time in one place with the same group of people, tracking your theatre role family tree becomes one huge incestuous orgy by the time you’re three shows in. Which is why you stop worrying about it.

innocencekiller: Perfection. Paper Towns, John...

Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:22 -0400

innocencekiller:

Perfection.

Paper Towns, John Green.

There’s a decent chance this is going to be one of the readings at my wedding.

Why a Certain Reaction to the TfiOS Casting is Ridiculous

Sat, 11 May 2013 09:16:00 -0400

So, I’m seeing a LOT of people reacting to the casting of Augustus Waters in the TFiOS movie with “Oh, but he plays Shailene’s brother in Divergent, and that’s gonna be so weird, to see them as love interests, like watching incest!”

…Um, guys? You realize that they’re actors, right? That this is what they do? That being an actor means being able to play a wide variety of different characters and make you forget about the actor in question and just watch the character? If they’d cast an actual brother and sister for Hazel and Gus, I could maybe see your point. Maybe. But these are two actors who happened to play a brother and sister in another project.

The last two shows I did, I worked with a guy named Jeff. In the first, Twelfth Night, I played Viola and he played Sebastian, who are twins. In the second, Bloody Poetry, I played Mary Shelley and he played Percy Bysshe Shelley, who are married and not at all Puritanical or squeamish about their love life and describing and demonstrating it in detail.

You know how many people took me aside after and said, “Great job, Cassie, but, uh, I was really disturbed by the fact that Jeff played your twin brother in the last show, and now he’s your lover. I couldn’t get past that. I couldn’t enjoy your performance.” ?

If you answered “Zero,” Congrats! That’s correct! Zero people. Because we’re actors. And that’s what we do.

So calm down, stop talking about incest, and trust John Green and the casting directors, yes?

Broadway Star Joins Johnny Depp in 'Into the Woods'

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:57:00 -0400

alesiakaye:

Tony-winner James Corden will play the Baker who lives next door to Meryl Streep’s Witch.

…

Read @ hollywoodreporter.com

I am entirely behind this decision. Entirely.

~~Except I don’t know what his singing voice is like, but I’m trusting people.~~

Fairy Tale Reviews: Beauty Sleep

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:50:28 -0400

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.

cardenio: lambocalypse: lightspeedsound: manybodies: lightspe...

Fri, 03 May 2013 23:35:10 -0400

cardenio:

lambocalypse:

lightspeedsound:

manybodies:

lightspeedsound:

lunapics:

theshells:

I can’t stop laughing at Harry running the fuck away, the boy who lived ladies and gentlemen.

….You realize, of course, that Hermione Granger lit a teacher on fire when she was eleven, and kept a person alive in a jar for a year when she was fourteen, and studies dark and forbidden magics for kicks, and is one of the brightest and strongest witches of her era. If she came at me, even wandless, I would aparate to Neptune to get away from her.

Hermione Granger also:

punched Draco Malfoy in the nose for being an idiot

purposefully performed a confundus charm on whatshsface WHILE HE WAS FLYING just so Ron would win (omfg that is so fucking dangerous)

literally pulled a fucking Bourne Identity on her parents and managed to set them up in fucking Australia (jesus christ she literally made it so that she NEVER EXISTED wtf that’s so fucking 007)

Convinced the Ministry of Magic to give her an incredibly dangerous and volatile device that allowed her to ALTER TIMELINES COMPLETELY (just because she was so smart, literally, that is the reason, her “potential”)

Has enough basic survival skills and badass magic to literally disappear to the middle of nowhere and flourish AND figure out Voldemort’s plot with Harry

Hermione also figures out not only what Voldemort’s plan is, but generally how to beat it, WAY BEFORE VOLDEMORT EVER DOES. Why? because she is just that much smarter and better at magic than everybody else

in conclusion: Voldemort wishes he could be as awesome as Hermione, that’s why he wants to kill her so bad.

Can we rehave this series with hermione as the protagonist.

Hermione Granger and “That Time I Used the Power of Research and Deductive Reasoning to Make Sure Harry Didn’t Die”

Hermione Granger and “That time I figured shit out and literally ended up petrified for the cause and it took my friends weeks to figure out that I had the research on me”

Hermione Granger and “That Time I Was a Time Lord”

Hermione Granger and “That Time I Realized I was Hot and Smart and Saved Harry’s Ass with Research. Again. All the Time. Really, He Would Have Died Without Me.”

Hermione Granger and “That time Harry was too emo to actually do shit so I did shit in his name because I am the power behind the throne clearly also PS fought evil deatheaters and won”

Hermione Granger and “That Time I told Harry about the Dangers of Copying off Somebody’s else’s work that wasn’t mine and OH LOOK I WAS RIGHT”

Hermione Granger and “That Time I let Harry Decide Where to Go and What To do and we ended up wandering the forests of dean for like 5 months before saving his ass at Hogwarts”

OH LOOK I WAS RIGHT

all of the above ^^

People who say JKR didn’t write strong enough female characters? I say to you, ^THIS^

Pride and Prejudice (1813) vs. Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Fri, 03 May 2013 18:25:03 -0400

mamaleh6994:

rammi:

Book:

Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances.

Movie:

Your hands are cold.

Book:

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Movie:

I love you. Most ardently.

This highlights just one of the many problems I have with the 2005 P&P.

fuckyeahthespianpeacock: Apparently four actress is too many...

Fri, 03 May 2013 09:04:11 -0400

fuckyeahthespianpeacock:

Apparently four actress is too many for them to be nominated as one (although there weren’t any problems with the multiple Billies from Billy Elliot all winning Best Actor). Not to mention all of the Matildas are 10/9 years of age and are A-MAY-ZING. Not cool, Tony Awards.

Submitted by Anon.

There was the same concern with the Matildas as there was with the Billies, they just got more people to speak up this time. And I can see where they’re coming from — the four would win jointly, but most of the adjudicators wouldn’t get to see all four. Also, they are being given an honorary achievement Tony, so at least they’re being recognized.

Conversations from the Children's Place

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:05:00 -0400

So, I work in the children's room of my local library, which means I overhear, and occasionally participate in, some pretty wonderful conversations. Take tonight. It was about 6pm, and we didn't have any programs going on, so it was pretty dead, just one kid and his mom, so I'm taking advantage of the quiet to do some shelving in Children's Fiction, when this kid (either a very precocious four-year-old or a very small five-year-old) comes up and starts following me and my cart of books around. Finally, he speaks.

Boy: Excuse me, ma'am?
Me: Yes?
Boy: Um . . . I was wondering . . .? [long pause]
Me: Yes?
Boy: Why . . . am I the only one here?
Me: Well, I think a lot of kids are probably home for supper.
Boy: But I'm the only one here.
Me: Yep! You have the whole Children's Place to yourself!
Boy: But, ma'am?
Me: Yes?
Boy: That's just no good, ma'am. Because what about this? [He goes to our puppet stage] I can't play this.
Me: You could make up a one-man puppet show.
Boy: No, I'm much too much young for it. I can't do this with the puppets, like this. [He proceeds to show me exactly how the puppets work, proving that, actually, he can] I can't do this, see?
Me: Well, maybe not, but there are lots of other things to play.
Boy . . . Yeah.
Me: [I go back to my shelving; about 30 seconds later, he's back, hanging around our electronic catalogue that's placed to be accessible to a standing adult]
Boy: Ma'am?
Me: Yes?
Boy: What is this Internet?
Me: That's just our catalogue, not the internet. You can look up books there to see if we have them in.
Boy: But I can't. There's no seat for me, and I'm not this much long [his gesture makes it clear he means 'tall']. Can your internet look up boy books?
Me: Yes, it can. Do you want me to help you find a book?
Boy: No, I can't read. [He keeps following me around and asking questions, and since what I'm doing isn't that important, and he clearly wants to talk to somebody, I tell him about our Harry Potter display and the plaque on our donated shelves, and things like that. Finally, I help him get out our tabletop blocks. He seems occupied, so I move to go back to my shelving]
Boy: Can you play blocks with me?
Me: Sorry, I wish I could, but I have other jobs I have to do.
Boy: [sadly] Okay, ma'am. I understand. [This child was absolutely precious. I really wanted to play blocks with him.]

slythindor394: In remembrance of all those who died in the...

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:34:17 -0400

slythindor394:

In remembrance of all those who died in the Battle of Hogwarts on 2nd May 1998.

It’s been 15 years today since the Battle of Hogwarts and the Fall of Lord Voldemort. Let us...

Thu, 02 May 2013 08:24:30 -0400

It’s been 15 years today since the Battle of Hogwarts and the Fall of Lord Voldemort. Let us remember those we lost, and continue looking to the future, working for continued peace and unity in the wizard world.

You may be a book addict if...

Wed, 01 May 2013 21:47:41 -0400

1: You spend a lot of money on books. Even at thrift stores and used book stores. You can never get enough.
2: You have bookcases, shelves, or stacks of books EVERYWHERE.
3: Most of those shelves are warped from the weight of all of your books.
4: You can never pass a bookstore or a store with a selection of books without having just. one. glimpse. inside. ("Just one, I swear!")
5: People give you books or giftcards to bookstores as gifts for special events.
6: You ALWAYS have a book with you. Even if it is a huge hardcover edition.
7: You can never stop talking about books. Ever.
8: You occasionally say, "Oh, that movie looks interesting! Better read the book first, since it's probably even better!" Or some variation of that.
9: You proudly show off the fact that you read an incredibly difficult book that not a lot of people have read. Be proud!
10: Your parents have told you to do something social... maybe go outside, see the sun, smell fresh air.
11: You have mastered the "don't-talk-to-me-or-else-you're-dead-to-me" look for people who have boundary issues when you're reading.
12: Sarcasm is occasionally your friend when people say obnoxious things about you reading so much.
13: You salivate over pictures of books. It's okay, we all do it.
14: You can't browse the deals section of a cheap book website because you know you can't really afford it, but you'll shop anyway.
15: One of your goals in life is to have a personal library in your home when you have your own house.
16: The smell of new books, or old books, is something you look forward to.
17: You always take a step back after putting your book haul away and stare at your growing book collection.
18: You basically live at the library, bookstore, or secondhand bookstore closest to your home.
19: You want to marry a book lover, too.
20: You occasionally break into emotional hysterics when reading a really intense book in public.
21: You ask yourself: physical books or ebooks?
22: You need to place a book buying ban on yourself.
23: Your parents punish you by taking your books instead of "normal" things
Have any more? Feel free to add!

You've written a novel!? What's it called???

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:04:40 -0400

I’ve written a handful, actually, but they’re all unpublished as of right now.

Bridging the Gap is a novel I co-wrote through letters with a friend about time travel and Renaissance England.

We Behind the Curtain is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, set backstage at a college production of The Wizard of Oz.

Spinning Tales, Spinning Truth is my retelling of Sleeping Beauty, following the prince as he tries to sort out the truth of the sleeping princess from all the rumors and stories flying around.

Deliverance is my almost-finished monstrosity of a Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling.

And I have six or seven others in the works or in the midst of planning stages. It’s my goal to be published someday, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The baby in Harry Potter 1 is Albus Severus in Harry Potter 7.

Wed, 01 May 2013 08:46:21 -0400

heartandsoulplace:

I’M THAT OLD?

PSA: THIS IS NOT TRUE.

I see this everywhere, because we thrive on sentimentality, I guess, but it is patently untrue. A simple imdb search disproves it, y’all:

Baby Harry in movie 1 was played by the Saunders Triplets.

Albus Potter in movie 8 was played by Arthur Bowen.

You pick your fights on the Internet, and this one is mine. I will debunk this if it’s the last thing I do.

Fairy Tale Reviews: Sleeping Beauty (According to Cassie)

Wed, 01 May 2013 08:01:34 -0400

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!

Fairy Tale Reviews: Little Red Riding Hood Wrap Up

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:02:21 -0400

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!

Fairy Tale Reviews: Princess of the Silver Woods

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:33:31 -0400

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.