Fairly Disappointing Tales

I have never been a really big fan of fairy tales. I could always just take 'em or leave 'em.  I am, however, quite a big fan of fairy tales that have been retold.   Whether the new versions are attempting to get back to the roots and present an actual earlier version, or, imagining what the inspiration for the story may have been, presenting it as historical fiction, or whether they are twisting a tale into something funny or dark, I love them all the same.  Well, let me clarify - I love them as long as they are not boring or dumb or poorly written.

I came across a book recently that was a take on the Alice in Wonderland story.  I know, not a fairy tale in the true sense, but still a magical story that takes place in an imaginary land, which most children have become familiar with, so.  Being so similar, I think it would be okay to lump it in with the rest.  Anyway, the book I came across was Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes.

This is not the story of the Wonderland we know. Alice has not fallen down a rabbit hole. There is no all-knowing cat with a taunting smile. This is a Wonderland where beneath each smile lies a secret, each tart comes with a demand, and only prisoners tell the truth.

Dinah is the princess who will one day reign over Wonderland. She has not yet seen the dark depths of her kingdom; she longs only for her father’s approval and a future with the boy she loves. But when a betrayal breaks her heart and threatens her throne, she is launched into Wonderland’s dangerous political game. Dinah must stay one step ahead of her cunning enemies or she’ll lose not just the crown but her head. 

Evil is brewing in Wonderland and maybe, most frighteningly, in Dinah herself. 

This is not a story of happily ever after. 

This is the story of the Queen of Hearts.

I thought the blurb sounded fantastic.  I thought I would like this version way better than the original, which I never particularly cared for.  I thought it would be super interesting to read in the format of a novel, especially because the villain was now the main character.  All those things I thought?  I thought wrong.  It turns out that Queen of Hearts is another example of a book that had a great idea that was poorly executed.

So, lets talk a little bit about the characters.  The heroine, Dinah, the future Queen of Hearts, was actually pretty likable.  She was sufficiently developed to get a sense of her character, and, due to her circumstances, you can't help but feel sympathetic toward her.  Unfortunately, the writing didn't make us love her.  Most of her thoughts were simplistic and sometimes even contradictory.  And I don't know why the blurb told us that evil was brewing in her, because that wasn't even in the story.  Annnd, the author could have done a much better job with her dialogue.

Pretty much the rest of the characters were extremely flat and hyper-stereotypical, making them beyond boring.  Except for the Mad Hatter.  I liked what the author did with him, making him less mad and more of an autistic savant, but she pretty much eliminates him from the story by the end of this book, which, I discovered about three quarters of the way through, is actually book one in a trilogy, so, so  much for that bright spot in an otherwise bland lineup.

And then there is the romance portion of story – which actually pops up quite often.  Dinah is in love with her childhood friend, who now works in the stables but is training to be something much more important.  She is planning to marry him when she is queen, but he seems to be completely uninterested in her in a romantic way.  Until, that is, the very end of the book, when he suddenly seems to be just as much in love with her.  Granted, the narrator does not go into any of his thought processes, but you would think the author could have given him actions or expressions that would give the reader more of a hint as to his real feelings toward her.  Of course, the writing is pretty simplistic, so I guess that explains that.

As for the plot elements, what can I say, a lot of them were kinda weird?  For example,  Dinah's father’s advisor shows her a secret tunnel under the castle that not even the king knows about.  This was obviously necessary because Dinah later uses the tunnel to get to the Black Tower (the prison) to interrogate one of the prisoners.  For the rest of the story, said advisor seems to be pretty much completely on the side of the king (which is to say, NOT on Dinah’s side), so we are left wondering what his motivation could possibly be to have shown her the tunnels.  It is pretty obvious that the author just needed a way for the princess to find them.  And about that trip to the prison - the entire thing was completely ridiculous from start to finish. I don't even want to waste the energy explaining all the things I didn't like about it, so you'll just have to take my word for it. 

To top it all off, some of the things the author writes are just plain dumb.  For example, near the very end of the book it says:

She looked back at Morte, following several hundred yards behind, his ears pressed flat against his head.  Even the deadly Hornhooves feared the Twisted Wood.  Fear churned the insides of her stomach.  Dinah drew her sword, and with that, the former Princess of Wonderland and her black devil steed disappeared into the Twisted Wood, leaving nothing behind but a false trail and the distant whiff of a crown.

So, her scary horse thing is following her from several hundred yard behind, which is like the length of four football fields end to end, and she can see that his ears are flattened to his head.  And if she draws her sword and 'with that' they both enter the forest, how is that even possible when he is so far behind her?  That false trail?  The way it is described (a few paragraphs back) that she went about making it sounded like anyone trying to track her could just follow the whole thing right to where she was, so maybe a bit more research (or even some thought) should have gone into that one.  And what's with that 'whiff of a crown' line?  Uuuugghhh.

Okay.  I am done talking about this book.  I'll just finish up by saying that, overall, the story seemed to be grossly underdeveloped.  It seemed to be primarily narration, but without that special feel and depth to the writing that makes that sort of thing work.  It wasn't a very long book, so perhaps giving it 400 pages or so could have fixed much of the problem, but then again, maybe not, since the author just may not have the talent to pull off something better.

And now, another fairy tale retelling.  But guess what?  You probably shouldn't read Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge, by Lisa Jensen, either.

They say Château Beaumont is cursed. But servant-girl Lucie can’t believe such foolishness about handsome Jean-Loup Christian Henri LeNoir, Chevalier de Beaumont, master of the estate. But when the chevalier's cruelty is revealed, Lucie vows to see him suffer. A wisewoman grants her wish, with a spell that transforms Jean-Loup into monstrous-looking Beast, reflecting the monster he is inside.

But Beast is nothing like the chevalier. Jean-Loup would never patiently tend his roses; Jean-Loup would never attempt poetry; Jean-Loup would never express remorse for the wrong done to Lucie.

Gradually, Lucie realizes that Beast is an entirely different creature from the handsome chevalier, with a heart more human than Jean-Loup’s ever was. Lucie dares to hope that noble Beast has permanently replaced the cruel Jean-Loup — until an innocent beauty arrives at Beast’s château with the power to break the spell.

I was originally going to recommend this book as an alternative to Queen of Hearts, but after reading it, I just couldn't come up with enough to say about it to write an extended review.  Then I read the author's note at the end.  And I was like, nope.  I've got some stuff to say about that.  And then that got me thinking more about the story, and I was like, maybe I do have something to say about this after all.  (So just a bit of warning; my comments may contain spoilers, but since I am strongly suggesting that you not bother reading the book anyway, it probably won't matter if you continue reading this.)

The book starts out telling the story of a housemaid working in the chevalier's chateau.  The author uses her to illustrate what a horrible person he is, and it is his actions toward her that cause him to be cursed.  I like this part.  It was a very promising start.  There was nothing wrong with the writing and it was well-paced and pretty interesting.  But then ...

Things started to fall apart and it is all because of what the author wrote in her note at the end:

Who doesn't love Beauty and the Beast?  It's irresistible, the tale of tragic Beast and the brave girl who sees through the outer monster to the noble soul within. 

But the moment that all thinking women dread is the climax when the marvelous Beast transforms back into the bland, handsome prince. . . 

So why is it the prince who gets the "reward" of Beauty's love?  And why is Beauty so ready to forget the Beast she says she loves and marry the prince?  Doesn't Beast himself deserve to be the hero?

Okay.  Hold on a second.  First of all, who ever said that the prince was bland?  I don't think he was supposed to boring at all.  (Incidentally, in this book he is portrayed as being far, far, from bland.)

Second, I most definitely consider myself a thinking woman, and I can assure you that I never once, in all the times I watched the Disney version of this story, dreaded the part where the prince gets to be human again.

And third, which would explain her own dread, I think the author has completely missed the point of the fairy tale.  Beast and the prince are not two different characters.  The prince is still the prince, he has just had his outward appearance transformed into a physical manifestation of his beastly character.  As a punishment for being a beastly man.  He can no longer beguile people with his outward appearance, and is punished by having to be alone.  The punishment is supposed to change his character.  Only then, when his heart and mind are no longer beastly, can he be free of his beastly appearance and become handsome once again.  What does the girl falling in love with him have to do with anything?  Well, that is the proof that he has really changed.  Because she won't be swayed by his good looks.  Duh.

This book really has three things wrong with it.  First, when the chevalier (prince) is transformed into Beast, he completely forgets who he is.  He is just now a completely different character who is pretty much nice and noble from the very beginning.  So there is no transformation of character, really, to accompany the symbolic transformation of body.  You just have the awful chevalier and the noble beast.  So the moral of the story has been completely erased.  Along with this problem, you have two girls.  Lucie, the housemaid, who seems to really like Beast, and the Beauty, who agrees to  marry him, not because she loves him, mind you, but actually for his money.  Once again, so much for fairy tale as morality story.

The second thing wrong with this book is that Lucie keeps going back and forth and back and forth between I really want to watch Beast suffer (because after all, he is really Jean-Loup) and I really like Beast and hate to see him suffering.  I mean, she goes back and forth with this for half the book.  Then she starts going I don't want you to have to be beastly forever, but we can't let Jean-Loup come back, because he is a horrible person and the only thing I live for is to have my revenge and watch him suffer.  Which, I guess, all goes back to the fact that the author has somehow not realized that the point of the fairy tale was that love can transform a person.  (Never mind the fact that, if beast is a totally different 'person' there is no Jean-Loup suffering!)  This really became quite tedious and annoying.

The third thing wrong with the book was the way the author kept throwing in parts that were almost exactly like the Disney movie version of the story.  Look, if you're going to change up the beginning, ending, and major premise of the story, how about you just make the whole thing original instead of inserting parts that read like a narrative of the movie?  I think this is what made the book the worst.  Because I hate stories like that.  (You know, we all say the book was better than the movie, but it doesn't seem to work out so well for the book when the movie comes first.)

So now, just like that time when I read a terrible pirate novel and decided to be on the lookout for a good one, or that time when I couldn't seem to find a decent dystopian story, I'm going to have to find a different fairy tale that is actually good.  If you know of any, let me know.  And if you don't, well, while I try to find a new one, you can have a look at my Fairy Tales book list and read one that I've read in the past and approved of.

What I've Read Lately - August

August seemed to stretch on and on and on, like FOREVER.  And yet, I couldn't seem to get through my reading selections very fast at all.  Maybe because most of the books I chose weren't super great.  Maybe because I really didn't spend all that much time reading this month.  Probably a little bit of both.  Here's what I managed to get through:

Mira, Mirror, by Mette Ivie Harrison, is a story about, you guessed it, the fairy tale magic mirror.  The book begins with a brief sort of backstory to the wicked queen and her mirror, and then spends the majority of the time trying to develop the theme of sisterhood.  But instead of subtly weaving it into the story, she gives us a long and tedious rambling about the two teenage girls she is traveling with.  Near the end it looks like this might be a mashup of (sort of) Snow White and Beauty and the Beast, because there is a vaguely beastly nobleman finding his bride, but then it just sort of drops that and goes back to the whole sister thing, which, if done well would have made a nice ending, but instead came off as being remarkably unbelievable.  It took me a whole week to read this book, and it wasn’t even very long.  And I didn’t enjoy it.  I only finished it because I abandoned so many books last month.  If you are looking for a (very) different take on the Snow White story, read Donna Jo Napoli’s book Dark Shimmer instead.

Sasha Dawn likes to write books about missing people and buried bodies and maybe-murders.  Her first book, Oblivion, was absolutely fantastic (see my review here), and her second one, Splinter, was nothing special but still well done (see my mini-review here).  Her latest book, Blink, is about a guy who lives in a small town where a little girl went missing twelve years ago, who meets a girl who may have a connection to that other missing girl.  It took me about half the book to get into it, because the first part was mostly about football and the guy's relationship with his terrible mother (oh, and it had its fair share of bad behavior - see this review), but then it started to fall into the groove of the mystery and it got a lot better.   (Reading Level ? / Upper Grades)

Almost three years ago I wrote a post called Give That Author a Second Chance!  Well, guess what?  I have now given Trisha Leaver her second chance and I think I might very well be done with her.  I actually started Sweet Madness last month.  It is supposed to be about Lizzie Borden, the infamous axe murderer (murderess?), and I thought I would like it because A) - I haven't come a cross a book about this before and B) - I love historical fiction.  Then I noticed that it was written by the same author as another book that I've read, and really didn't like, so I was like oh great.  And then I noticed that the picture on the cover is the exact same picture as used on a book published four years earlier and I was like, extreme eye roll.  But I decided to give it a try anyway.  It was SOOOOoooo boring.  And I had already struggled through and abandoned several books in a row.  So I set it aside to give a try later.  Well, now it's later and I decided to just not bother.  If you want a good book that is historical fiction with a murder, skip this one and go to my Historical Fiction Book List  and do a keyword search for 'murder.'

Don't be fooled by the blurb inside the front cover of this one - it is not a scary creepy story.  It is actually quite absurd.  Lucky for me, when it comes to books, I love the absurd.  There is just something about stories like The Willoughbys, A is for Aarrgh!, A House Called Awful End, The Fall of Fergal, and A Whole Nother Story that I find too, too funny.  Wax, by Gina Damico, was one of those books, but like, for older readers.  It is about a girl whose town is being taken over by a century-old couple who keep reincarnating themselves inside wax replicas.  Since the girl is the only one who knows what is really happening, it is up to her to save everyone.  The book reads like a full feature film length version of one of the sketches from the Disney Channel show So Random! (If you haven't seen it, check out this video.)  It takes a couple of chapters to really get into its groove, but after that - super entertaining.   (Reading Level ? / Upper Grades)

Unbound, by Neal Shusterman, is a companion novel to the Unwind series that I previously reviewed here.  So, I say it is a companion novel, even though I guess it is actually a series of short stories, because the original books were written in a way that followed different characters, some of which overlapped with others at different points in the story.  So the story was divided into 'chapters' that switched back and forth between those different characters, and at times seemed like a bunch of different stories all mixed up together.  That's kind of how this book feels as you get further into it.  I say as you get further in, because near the beginning the 'stories' focus more on the backstory for certain characters in the series, then it presents more details to parts that took place in the original books (you know, like scenes that were cut from a movie), and finally, it moves into things that happened after the fourth book in the series ended.  Kind of like the next chapter in the story.  So, what did I think of it?  Was it as good as the original four books?  Well, at first I wasn't very in to it.  But the farther along I got, the more I liked it, and by the last story it felt like I was reading an extended version of the fourth book.  Interestingly, the series is being scripted for film right now, and the ending to Unbound adds what would be a much better ending for a movie, so maybe that was part of the idea behind publishing it.  Overall, if you liked the first four books you should like this as well.   But I wouldn't read it as a stand alone - it won't make a lot of sense and so won't be enjoyable.  (Reading Level 5.5 / Middle Grade+)

I LOVED Munmun by Jesse Andrews.  It was absolutely brilliant.  Too bad for you I'm not going to say anything else about it right now.  Stay tuned for a longer review coming up later this month.   (Reading Level 6.6 / Upper Grades)