I won't lie, I absolutely read this because I wanted to watch the new Netflix adaptation. A long time ago, pretty much the only books I ever read wereI won't lie, I absolutely read this because I wanted to watch the new Netflix adaptation. A long time ago, pretty much the only books I ever read were fantasy novels - especially in my teens and early 20s. So I've read quite a lot of them, and wrote my Honours dissertation on the genre; it's very much like coming home, reading a fantasy novel now. While I knew The Witcher was a popular video game (also adapted from the books), I can't speak for it or compare it as I've never played it.
Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher, a lone warrior with an impressive skill set who travels around the many kingdoms, looking for monsters to kill in exchange for money from whoever will pay. Trained from a very young age and augmented, he is now considered a mutant who can use some magical Signs in his work but who isn't a sorcerer or anything of the kind. He's a taciturn individual committed to his trade and the Witcher code, right to the point of arguing with powerful monarchs about it. He has two friends, in this book: Dandilion the bard and poet, and Nanneke, a priestess whom he visits when injured (and possibly at other times, when he's passing by? It's not clear). He's also been in a serious relationship with a sorceress called Yennefer, but he left because, in his words, she was too "clingy".
The novel is actually a collection of shorter adventures, re-workings and adaptations of familiar fairy-tales such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rapunzel (these two are worked into the same story together) and Beauty and the Beast. Between each is a continuous storyline in which Geralt is taking shelter at a temple, tended to by Nanneke, after he is injured in a fight with a striga. Some of the stories work as flashbacks as he's talking to Nanneke. Geralt's adventures are enjoyable, entertaining and fairly fast-paced, with plenty of blood and gore and violence (you can see why it made such a good video game - gosh I am a cynic!). My first impression, that this was a work of Fantasy-Horror, didn't really stick: the horror elements weren't pronounced, though the element of danger is always present.
But I have to discuss my pet peeve about fantasy fiction (anyone who's read my review of the first Game of Thrones book will be familiar with this): the casual sexism and blatant misogyny - yes, both - that some authors write into fantasy without much conscious thought. Such is the extent to which it is normalised in western culture (including Poland, where the author is from). I've had people argue with me on this, insisting that it's true to the medieval, feudal European setting. Sure, yes, it is. But these stories are not set in medieval Europe, are they? What they actually do is reflect, normalise and further embed the patriarchal status quo. It's fantasy: you can create new settings, inspired by medieval Europe sure, but the author is in control. The Last Wish is riddled with offhand comments on girls and women, everything from the barmaid's bottom being pinched as she works to the idea of women being vessels for disorder and deceit.
When women are strong and fearless, they are dangerous and must be stopped. Their deeds are described as heinous, evil aberrations. When they are weak and/or ugly, they are barely noticeable. When they are in positions of power, such as the queen of Cintra, Calanthe, she comes across as difficult and out-of-her-depth. One of the first stories is about Renfri, a girl born during an eclipse and considered mutated and cursed. All 60 girls born that day were either killed or locked into towers because they were prophesied to bring about doom and death. Renfri escaped (the Snow White story) and, after forming a band of outlaws (the 'dwarfs'), goes on a mission of revenge against the wizard who tried to kill her so many times. It is an interesting story about evil, and the idea of a lesser evil, but it ends with Geralt killing Renfri and then, possibly, regretting it. So this strong, resourceful woman (my interpretation) is snuffed out, all so Geralt could grow as a man.
It is the classic plurality: in Western culture, women are either innocent virgins or alluring femme fatales who lead men astray (Eve in the Garden of Eden) and must be punished. Women are horribly simplified in The Last Wish and serve as little more than objects for the male gaze.
Unlike priestesses and druidesses, who only unwillingly took ugly or crippled girls, sorcerers took anyone who showed evidence of a predisposition. If the child passed the first years of training, magic entered into the equation - straightening and evening out legs, repairing bones which had badly knitted, patching hairlips, removing scars, birthmarks and pox scars. The young sorceress would become attractive because the prestige of her profession demanded it. The result was pseudo-pretty women with the angry and cold eyes of ugly girls. Girls who couldn't forget their ugliness had been covered by the mask of magic only for the prestige of their profession. [pp.302-3]
There's an opportunity, here, to invert the casual sexism and do something fresh and liberating, but Sapkowski isn't interested in that. His women are pretty straight-forward creatures (and his men aren't much better).
Did I enjoy The Last Wish? Sure, because there's plenty here to enjoy, even if it lacked a central plot to bind it all together (they've fixed this for the TV series, I noticed). I just have to let slide all the sexism but that's not difficult, women have been doing that for centuries....more
The Beast's Garden is set in Berlin from late 1938 until just after the end of the war. A loose retelling of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale, "The SingThe Beast's Garden is set in Berlin from late 1938 until just after the end of the war. A loose retelling of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale, "The Singing, Springing Lark" (itself a variant of the more well-known "The Beauty and the Beast"), the combination of setting and love story makes for an often tense, harrowing reading experience. The main protagonist, Ava Falkenhorst, is a native Berliner, her father a German psychoanalyst and professor, her mother a Spanish singer who died giving birth. She has two older half-sisters, Bertha and Monika, but she was raised by her mother's best friend, Tante Thea, whose son Rupert was born within hours of Ava. Both Ava and Rupert are musicians, Rupert playing trumpet and piano, Ava singing in a low contralto. Their favourite music is jazz and blues - Billie Holiday and other American artists - and the world seems bright and full of promise, and not even the rise of Hitler is taken all that seriously in Ava's artistic, well-educated circle.
Then, Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), the Night of Broken Glass, when her friend's family is harassed, their apartment destroyed, and they are forced to leave, taking shelter in Ava's family home. It seems, to Ava, like the whole world has suddenly gone mad. It is also on Crystal Night that she meets a young Nazi officer, Leo von Löwenstein, who draws her as a man but repels her as representative of all she considers wrong in Germany. But when her father is arrested for sending letters to warn influential people in other countries about what is happening in Germany, Ava's only recourse is to turn to Leo for help, no matter the cost.
This sets up the remainder of the story, and for a book that lasts the duration of World War II, there's a lot more that happens. Forsyth's Berlin is carefully, authentically recreated, from the glorious old buildings - many commandeered by the Nazis - and Tiergarten (or "Beast's Garden"), to the rubble and ruin it is all reduced to in the air raids. That juxtaposition of glory, grandeur and beauty against the destruction of war is painfully poignant and all too tragic. Knowing, as you do when you start reading, how the war ends, how Hitler survives to the end, and what happens to the political prisoners, the homosexuals, the disabled and the Jews, not to mention neighbouring nations, there were times when this knowledge aided the tense, frightening atmosphere, yet it also made me fear for an unhappy ending for Ava and Leo.
While Ava's perspective dominates, brief scenes from Rupert's point of view within Buchenwald concentration camp - and, later, a few from Leo and Rupert's sister Jutta - flesh out and enhance the narrative while also providing that harrowing, intimate view of the inside of a concentration camp. You only need these scenes to be brief - longer and the impact would be lost - but it also serves to show that side of the war within Germany. Everything in the story takes place within that nation, mostly in Berlin, and the contrasts between the abject poverty, homelessness and violence endured by the Jews, the gypsies and even many Germans, and the opulent wealth and excessive luxuries enjoyed by the upper class, particularly the Nazi elite, is sickening. So, too, is the waste of human life, the mass exterminations and the sheer cruelty shown to people the Nazis called "sub-human".
Early on, Ava reads her niece - Bertha's young daughter - the fairy tale "The Singing, Springing Lark" and remembers her father reading it to her. When he first asked her what she thought it was about, she told him it was about never giving up. Later, she told him it was about being brave, and when she was older she thought it was about true love. This captures the essence of The Beast's Garden well: it is definitely about never giving up, about being brave and about true love, and makes you ponder the idea that these must surely be some of the most important things in life. You could add, though, that it is also about being compassionate (caring for and about others) and about standing up for what is right (which, granted, looks different to different people).
That last one is tricky, because from Hitler's perspective, he was doing what was right - just as Donald Trump (who has often been compared to Hitler, including by Holocaust survivors) also believes in what he is standing up for (or, at least, his supporters do - I'm never entirely sure whether Trump believes anything he says or is just too far-gone in the well of Spin). Forsyth provides balanced insights into the ideological and psychological aspects of Germany's people at this time, presenting the different attitudes and showing just how lacking in unity they really were. A great many of the characters in the novel, according to Forsyth's very interesting Afterword, were real people involved in the underground resistance movement. I knew of the White Rose already, from using the film Sophie Scholl in one of my English classes a couple of years ago, and I have long been curious about the German perspective and what else was going on. The French Resistance is well-known, but the German one has long fallen into obscurity - which is a shame. Ava is representative of the many who helped shelter and help Jews, and wanted to stop the war, though they were indeed too few to do all that much against the well-oiled Nazi machine. The obstacles, the price of resistance, the despair and the horror are all captured by Forsyth - she has done a wonderful job of humanising the Germans (even those who supported the Nazis) as well as the Jews, and creating a true ethical and moral crisis. It's this aspect of the story that really gives it depth, clarity and realism.
While I was worried, at first, that Ava's character seemed a little too similar to cliched heroines that I've read before, and that the romance would devolve into formulaic lines, I was pleased (and relieved) when it shifted to focus more on the war, on resisting the Nazis and trying to save their loved ones. The Ava and Leo relationship becomes an anchor throughout, a smoldering, banked fire simply waiting for peace in order to shine to its fullest extent. It is this 'true love' they feel for each other - and the love and loyalty that so many other characters show for each other - that emphasises the horrors of this particular war. Towards the end, Forsyth's experience writing Fantasy novels stands her in good stead: the final scenes (before the epilogue), when Ava attempts a seemingly impossible rescue, are full of tension, brilliantly paced and carefully plotted.
The elements of romance, historical fiction, adventure (that ending) and a responsibility to honour all those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis are all beautifully balanced here in Forsyth's capable hands. She mentions, at the end of her Afterword, the fear she felt at being able to do it justice, that "I was afraid to fail all those people who suffered so terribly during the seven years of my story. It felt like some kind of responsibility ... to do my best to bring their suffering and their heroism to life. To, somehow, bear witness." (p.437) This is one of the powers of literature, of art in general, and a reason why we should privilege the Arts in all its forms. I would also say that, for someone who wasn't even born at the time, Kate Forsyth has done a wonderful job at bearing witness, and allowing me the opportunity to feel like I was there, living it. I'm not sure what more I could want from this book....more
Beauty is the youngest daughter of three. Her two older sisters, Grace and Hope, are beautiful and sweet and graceful, while Beauty - whose real name Beauty is the youngest daughter of three. Her two older sisters, Grace and Hope, are beautiful and sweet and graceful, while Beauty - whose real name is Honour - is thin, short, plain and studious. They live in the city, where their father is a successful merchantman with a fleet of ships, and Grace becomes engaged to one of his captains, Robert Tucker. In order to prove himself, Robbie insists on marrying after his next voyage, which will take three years. Five ships set out, but several years later, just when Hope has found a man she wants to marry, disaster strikes. The ships have been destroyed in a storm, or beached or vanished, including Robbie's. Only a few survivors remain, and their father's business is ruined.
Amid their grief over losing Robbie, the family must sell all it has left and move away. Hope's fiance, Gervain, who has been working for her father, has found a position as a local blacksmith in the wild country to the north, which comes with a cottage. He proposes to the family that they all come with him and set up house there, and maybe later he and Hope can marry. And so they do.
The cottage is small and they must do all the work themselves - no more maids or cooks or footmen - but they all rise to the occasion and find themselves growing strong again with the hard work and fresh air. Grace still grieves, but having so much to do from sunup to sundown keeps her going. After a year, Hope and Gervain marry and they expand the house a little. Ten months later, they have twins, Mercy and Richard, and in late September their father receives news from the city that one of his ships has returned to port, and he must go straight away and see.
It is during a blizzard several months later that their father returns to the cottage, surprising them all, and with a strange and scary tale to share. On his return home he found himself at a strange castle in the forbidding magical woods, a place that welcomed him, took care of him and his horse, fed him, cleaned his clothes and put him to bed - all without anyone showing themselves. Indeed, the place seemed to be deserted. But the next day, before he leaves, he takes a rose from an enchanted rose garden to bring back for Beauty, and that is when his angry host appears with a terrible bargain to make. At the end of the month, he must return with one of his daughters, who will stay with the beast in the castle forever. In exchange, the beast will spare his life.
Most likely we all know the story of "Beauty and the Beast", though it's the animated Disney version that probably comes to most people's mind. My earliest experience with the fairy tale was in my sister's book of Dean's Book of Fairy Tales, gorgeously illustrated by sisters Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone, from the 1960s. In fact, I have one of their Beast illustrations I can show you, of a tusked lion (and not all that ugly, really!):
[image]
McKinley's version is very much the same as the classic fairy-tale, though I don't have a copy of the older work on hand to double-check. Rather than a retelling, Beauty is more of a fleshed-out, novel-length version of the fairy tale - and most of that fleshing out is in the lead-up to Beauty meeting the Beast, which doesn't happen until page 129 in my edition. Since the story, as we read it these days (separate from any theoretical meanings or symbolism), is an inherently romantic one, this delay creates for a great sense of tension in what would otherwise be a humdrum story.
I haven't read anything else by McKinley, though I do have copies of Sunshine and Chalice; her writing has that lovely ability to take on the cadence and tone of a much older period. This is a historical fantasy story with no clear setting but which clearly implies an English one, perhaps in the 17th or 16th century. It hardly matters, however, and isn't a relevant detail. McKinley instead focusses on family relations, moral traits (like "honour", love and respect, and of course vanity) and the deeper messages of inner beauty, and beauty being "in the eye of the beholder". Classic Beauty and the Beast messages. Magic is, naturally, a means to an end, though in McKinley's retelling, she's managed to create a fantasy environment that feels genuinely magical and other-worldly.
It is a character-driven story, with firm fairy-tale boundaries. People are often either this, or that, with little room for grey - except for Beauty herself, that is. Of them all, she manages to bridge the divide between characterisations typical of fairy tales (captured in her sisters, for example, who are just so good), and the contemporary reader. She's relatable, and familiar, and human, without coming across as too "modern". The Beast has charisma and a rough kind of charm, and Beauty succinctly captures those qualities about him that make him sympathetic and all-too-human - it just takes her a while to reconcile them with his visage. He was an endearing character and I wanted to spend more time with him; at the same time I felt that he wouldn't be half so charismatic or interesting - or, indeed, romantic - if he became so familiar through extra "scene time" as to be rendered ordinary.
Beauty is about looking beneath the surface, of not judging people on appearances, and of not holding physical beauty over and above other personality traits, abilities and merits. Just like the fairy-tale. This relatively short novel is an ideal format for engaging with the story in a richer, more in-depth way than that provided by a short story (or, indeed, the Disney version). It's a slow-paced, gentle story that nevertheless has darker undertones - undertones that are, sadly I thought, never explored, though perhaps there really isn't a place for it. Ultimately, it is about finding friendship and love in unlikely places, about the genuine versus the superficial (symbolised through the magical castle versus Beauty's real-world poverty and simple, hard-working life), and about honouring your promises and being, in general, a genuine person.
McKinley's version lacks the gothic atmosphere of other retellings (which perhaps I expect only due to , another kind of retelling) but more than makes up for it with rich visual descriptions, a strong sense of place and character, and an engaging heroine....more
Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go, Friday's child is loviMonday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go, Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child works hard for a living, But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day Is blithe and bonny and good and gay.
Sunday is the youngest of the Woodcutter children, with six older sisters and two brothers, plus an adopted Fey brother, crammed into a house that resembles a boot. The eldest son, Jack, had, long ago, gone to work at the palace where, so the story goes, he had been cursed in punishment for kicking Prince Rumbold's dog. Sunday doesn't really know what happened after that, only that there is a deep animosity for the royal family from her parents.
She never expects to meet anyone from the royal family, of course. Life is full and busy enough as it is at home. She snatches moments of peace to go with her notebook to the pond to write in solitude. Sunday loves to write stories, but she long ago discovered that whatever she writes has a tendency to come true, so now she's careful to only write of things that have already happened. Still, she feels she has a boring life, and as the child named for Sunday, she is graced with cheerfulness - another trait she feels make her less interesting, especially compared to her colourful sisters.
Monday married a handsome prince after spending a night on a pile of mattresses through which she could feel a pea; Tuesday danced herself to death in a pair of enchanted slippers; Wednesday is strange and distracted and spends most of her time gazing at the moon and thinking; Thursday left to join her pirate husband as captain of a ship, sailing around the world and periodically sending back marvellous gifts; Friday is full of generosity and selfless deeds, making clothes for orphaned children; and Saturday works hard on the farm with her father and other brother, wielding an axe.
It is a magical family - more so than Sunday ever realised, when her fairy godmother, Aunt Joy, arrives to present them with gifts, and train Sunday. Prince Rumbold has announced three consecutive nights of balls, to which every single young woman in the land has been invited, and so the unmarried Woodcutter sisters must all attend. At the palace, all is not right for the prince. Still recovering from having been turned into a frog, and anxious over whether Sunday will recognise him or love him still, he is haunted by the shade of his deceased mother. His unnaturally youthful-looking father, the king whose name has been forgotten, has decided the balls present an excellent opportunity for him to find a new wife. When, on the night of the first ball, the king sets his sights on one of the Woodcutter girls, Rumbold becomes increasingly aware that there is something very wrong with his father, and hence the kingdom.
This is a retelling of not just one fairy tale, but several, all seamlessly and excitingly meshed together. Sunday lives in fairytale world, a fantasy land not unlike Neil Gaiman's or Gail Carson Levine's , but unlike other, similar-style Fantasy stories, Kontis has borrowed straight from classic fairy tales rather than invent something new. And for the most part, it works. Some other reviewers have remarked that it can feel too crowded, and I have to agree that towards the end there was a bit of this. But what really made Enchanted stand out was what Kontis does with these fairy tales.
There isn't really one definitive version of each tale, they were always being altered by the teller and that's part of the fairy tale genre, so you can't really bastardise a fairy tale (though we could argue that Disney has come extremely close, with its saccharine versions). Kontis has taken elements from several different tales and woven them into her plot in imaginative ways, so you never feel like it's a predictable story. Far from it: you never quite know where the story's going to take you next.
Sunday is a lovely character. I was afraid she'd be too 'good' or happy, in that dull way (but Friday takes that role, in this book at least). She has plenty of positive traits, such as patience, tolerance, compassion, forgiveness and loyalty. But she's still young - fifteen, going on sixteen - and a bit self-absorbed (the world revolves around me kind of thing). Not to an irritating extent, more of a means of making her a realistic, and relateable, teenager. She carries most of the story but is by no means the heavy lifter.
That role lies with Rumbold. If Sunday's world is one of sunshine and life and laughter, Rumbold's is a dark, oppressive one of secrets, mysteries and betrayal. That's classic approach: associate the positives with the open, natural countryside, and associate the evils of the world with stone, politics, greed (humanity, in other words, versus the natural world). This is by no means the only dichotomy - the opposite can also be true, wherein the natural world takes on a supernatural quality and becomes dark, mysterious, unpredictable, menacing even. Here, it is the nature of greed and power (the greed for power) that lies at the heart of the kingdom's troubles - coupled with the means to achieve power: Rumbold's fairy godmother (and Aunt Joy's sister), Sorrow, who enables the king. The temptation is there, and he took it.
Rumbold is not a Disney hero. He is quiet, troubled, thoughtful and a bit anxious. He is recovering slowly from his time as a frog - he's lost weight and is always exhausted - though this, it turns out, has another root cause. He's uncomplicated and honourable, so there's never any uncertainty on the part of the reader that he would be good enough for Sunday. He's worthy, and he's tested. He can also be a bit slow on the uptake for someone who lives in an enchanted land, surrounded by magic and curses. We'll have to excuse him though: he did, after all, spend several months as a frog, forgetting who he really was.
There are different kinds, or forms, of love, and the way Kontis writes the early relationship between Sunday and the frog (which doesn't bear much resemblance to the common versions of the fairy tale as you would know it, it simply features a girl, a frog, a golden ball and a kiss of love) made it quite easy for me to believe in their kind of love, a love of friends that went as deep as the recognition of kindred spirits. A simple love, but a true one. It is merely the start, and when they meet again at the ball it is that recognition of spirits that persists, and leads to something stronger, more human.
Yet this is a relatively short novel, and the second half felt a bit rushed. True, part of that is the build-up of tension and suspense, as the plot becomes more central. But I did have this feeling of wanting to spend more time with the characters, because they were so interesting and I didn't quite feel like I'd got to know them well enough to really invest in their story as deeply as I wanted to. This is where the traits of a fairy tale don't always translate well into a Fantasy novel. Fairy tales don't do character development: they do stereotypes, caricatures, clichés. It's how you keep them short. They don't explain things, they don't need to. At best you have connections - they're stories with beginnings, middles and ends, after all. Kontis keeps the tone of a fairy tale in places, especially with a touch of humour and irreverence, but really this is a Fantasy novel, and as such I really wanted more meat on the bones. Perhaps it's a testament to her good ideas, characters and plotting that I was getting into it so much that I wanted more: more depth, more time.
But really, it seems silly to complain about such things. Kontis set out to write a Young Adult Fantasy novel loosely based on much-loved fairy tales, and as such, she succeeds admirably. This was rollicking good fun, with little surprises tucked away here and there that sprang on you when you least expected it, and a beautiful balance of light and dark. I may have wanted more, but if that's the case, I should just read the sequel, Hero, about Saturday's adventures. For engaging, lively, vigorous and inventive Fantasy, Kontis is one to watch....more
Caitrin fled her home in Market Town with little to her name, just her prized writing box - the tools of her craft - and a few pennies, enough to get Caitrin fled her home in Market Town with little to her name, just her prized writing box - the tools of her craft - and a few pennies, enough to get her away from her mean, domineering cousin Ita and Ita's son, Cillian, who in Caitrin's grief over her father's sudden death have taken over her home. Taught by her father, a master scribe, and having long aided him in his commissions, Caitrin was swallowed up by her grief when he died. Her sister Maraid married a travelling musician and moved away, leaving Caitrin alone with Ita, who took advantage of her in her state of sorrow, spreading the word that she was mad with grief, and insisting she marry Cillian, who left bruises on her at every opportunity.
Now Caitrin is truly on her own, certain that Cillian is not far behind her. Following a marker to a village at Whistling Tor, she finds a place that seems to believe that the supernatural will attack at any time. Taken in by the innkeeper and his wife, Tomas and Orna, she listens to their tales of their twisted, cursed chieftain, voices in the forest, and eery foes. Despite their superstitions, when Caitrin hears that the chieftain, Anluan, is looking for a scribe for the summer, she leaves the safety of the village to strike out up the mountain to offer her services.
Things on Whistling Tor are just as strange as she'd been told, but she still can't see Anluan as anything worse than a reclusive man suffering the effects of a childhood illness that left him feeble on one side of his body and a temper to make up for it. With his faithful retainers a mix of friendly and strange and odd and chillingly hostile, Caitrin is certainly the most "normal" one among them. They don't think she'll last the summer, but they hope she will - especially when they see the positive affect she has on Anluan.
As Caitrin delves deeper into the history of Whistling Tor and Anluan's predecessors, she learns more about the family curse and just how very real it is. Anluan inherited more than Whistling Tor and a chiefdom, he inherited an unnatural - a supernatural - army, a crazed horde that, if unleashed, would go on a killing frenzy that couldn't be stopped until the chief returned to the Tor. It had happened in the past, and it was why Anluan had never stepped foot off the Tor.
Now that the Normans are ever closer to taking over the west, and Whistling Tor is directly threatened, Caitrin must use what she's learned to show that there is another way, that Whistling Tor can be saved, and that Anluan is more than a curse-bearer, more even than the man she has come to care for. He is a leader, a true chieftain, and he can not only control the Host, he can set them free and break the curse. But it's easier said than done, and Caitrin faces opposition from both sides, gruelling set-backs, and an inherently evil adversary that has had a hundred years to hone its skills at wreaking havoc.
Set in Connacht, in the west of Ireland, in the 12th century, it is a time in Ireland's history when the Normans were slowly taking over the land, ruled at the time by loosely tied chieftains and kings, more often divided and at war with each than united against a common foe. The outside world and the Normans themselves stay mostly on the fringes of this story, a plot driver but not a key theme. The story itself is a wonderfully wrought and original retelling of "Beauty and the Beast". It is one of my favourite fairytales (which says a lot, as I've never been a big fan of fairytales in general) but that wouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows me, since Jane Eyre is one of my favourite novels and that too is a wonderful retelling of the old tale.
There are quite a few novels with the title "Heart's Blood", but in this case the title refers to a rare plant, the flowers of which provide an expensive purple ink. It plays another role in the novel, but I'll leave that for you to discover. This is a rich, detailed story, one of a young woman coming into her own, standing up for herself, and selflessly helping others; of a young man beset by doubt and his perceived deficiencies, who learns that he's capable of so much more than he ever believed - including happiness. It's a ghost story, a story of the destroying power of greed, and the feeing power of love. (I'm not sure why some see it as a YA novel - it's not. It's adult fantasy.)
With the slower, more methodical pacing of a classic epic fantasy novel, it has plenty of atmosphere: the rambling, ancient stone fortress at Whistling Tor is something alien itself, seemingly alive, changing and moving and reaching out over the decades. Its inhabitants are mostly dead themselves, with only Caitrin, Anluan, Magnus and Olcan and his giant dog, Fianchu, being actually alive. Others are part of the Host army, a rare few who have managed to conquer the voice that whips them into a killing frenzy, and who serve Anluan on a more personal level. A large part of the atmosphere comes from Caitrin's visits to the past, via a mirror that puts her in the mind of Anluan's ancestor Nechtan, as he puts together the black arts ceremony that will summon the Host - it's very chilling. His growing madness and depravity seeps through.
There were scenes in the novel that made me cry - I love it when a book can make me cry: a book that can reach me at that emotional depth, when its story and characters feel so alive and personal to me. I really liked the characters, especially Anluan and his loyal supporters. Caitrin took a bit longer to warm up to, even though she narrated. Her voice was a bit off for her age and background and the thoughts in her head: she came across as much, much older (like a staid forty-year-old woman who's been there, seen that), even while she's talking about how afraid she is and what Ita and Cillian did to her confidence. She also sounds quite modern most of the time. She had a tendency to ask poor questions, or not ask the obvious ones that would explain a good deal, and to miss the connections between things that seemed glaringly obvious. She was a bit slow, in other words, even though that didn't quite match her character.
I always struggle with these books set in places like Ireland and Scotland and Wales, because the Gaelic and Welsh languages are so not phonetic! I would have dearly liked a pronunciation guide in the back (there's one on Marillier's , but it wasn't much use to me there), and a map at the front. I loves me a good map! Especially in Fantasy novels, even ones like this that don't involve a quest that requires a journey. Caitrin does some travelling, and even in conversations that mentioned places, it was hard to picture how close everything was. Marillier wove in some solid details of the politics of the time, but only those that were relevant, so I can't say I learned much about medieval Ireland from that perspective. (Not that I was reading it for that purpose, but great fantasy is fantasy that has at least some political context, some structural world-building. Economics would be another.)
All in all, this is a wonderful fantasy story, an original retelling of a favourite classic tale, and an engaging and absorbing story in its own right. It's not a story to read for a complicated plot or clever twists (I guessed early on about Aislinn, for example) - it doesn't have that. It's a story to read for its rich setting, lively characters and atmospheric ghostly rendering. There are some lovely original touches amidst the faithful rendering of medieval Ireland. The ending is gripping and full of emotion. Definitely recommended for fans of fantasy, mythology, romance and medieval historical fiction. ...more
You've just got to love the premise behind "Beauty and the Beast", don't you? Anything that shines the spotlight on our preoccupation with looks and oYou've just got to love the premise behind "Beauty and the Beast", don't you? Anything that shines the spotlight on our preoccupation with looks and other superficial qualities, right? Yes, the whole "beauty is on the inside" started sounding corny long ago, and I still think that there's something off about how you see plenty of beautiful women with, ah, less than attractive men, but you don't see gorgeous men with less than attractive women, but I'm a romantic at heart and I like seeing the guy humbled in this story.
Here we have a Young Adult, modern day re-telling, and I found it great fun. Haven't seen the movie adaptation, but looking at the movie tie-in cover of my edition, they clearly didn't stick with the hairy beast description used in the book but went with something more visually interesting. I read the book in a day - it's a quick read, and easy to get drawn into.
The story is narrated by Kyle, a popular, attractive boy who lives alone with his TV news anchor dad who has taught Kyle to only care about outward appearances and how much money someone has. When he plays a baseless, mocking trick on a girl at school, Kendra, who he considers incredibly ugly, it turns out she's a witch and - more out of pity than revenge - she casts a curse on Kyle, turning him into a beast and giving him two years to make a girl fall in love with him.
What I really liked was how understandable Kyle was. Clearly a product of his upbringing, he starts out as an arrogant snob, becomes petulant and depressed when cursed (and outraged, naturally), and eventually matures into someone utterly sympathetic and likeable. His world is to all intents and purposes completely foreign to me, but I had no problem seeing through it to the terrible loneliness at its core - loneliness is one of those basic human experiences we find so easy to identify with and feel compassion for.
Also, as Kyle was forced to live a secluded life, pretty much abandoned by his father who didn't want the embarrassment of Kyle going public, he reads classics like Jane Eyre - and for the first time I noticed the parallels between that book, one of my utter favourites, and the classic fairy tale. What was Mr Rochester if not a beast of this kind? In a dark and eery castle-like abode, he is moody, gruff, forbidding, abrupt, not handsome and, probably in his own eyes at least, cursed (with a mad wife and no chance at happiness). And despite it all he makes a plain, penniless girl, far beneath his station, fall in love with him. It was a lightbulb moment that now seems so obvious, but there you go!
The heroine of the story is Lindy, a scholarship girl whose father is a drug addict and dealer. She will probably be a bit too sweet for most people but I found that she provided such a nice counter to Kyle (who renames himself Adrian), that I quite liked her. Quite possibly I liked her because Kyle/Adrian liked her so much - and that I did believe, not matter how strangely it began.
Another aspect worth mentioning is how the novel is broken into segments that begin with an online chat kind of thing, a forum for fairy tale like creatures - there's a mermaid considering trading her life for a chance to have two legs and win the heart of the man she loves; a cursed frog bemoaning his chances of ever finding a girl who'll want to kiss him; and Grizzlyguy, who I couldn't quite work out to be honest. It added to the fairy-tale theme, broadened it into something more plausible because it connected the reader with other strange goings-on, and provided a light-hearted banter as well as a taste of what was coming, and was a good way of introducing the Beast.
My rating here reflects how much fun I had reading it, with no preconceptions or expectations. It was just what I needed....more
Loading...
