Library Mama

Seraphina by Rachel Hartmann

Decades ago, the Queen of a human kingdom and the King of the dragons worked out a peace treaty, still not completely trusted by anyone. Since then, the dragons (who call themselves saars) have decided that humans can be interesting. They take human form, or sarantras, and come to the city to explore human ways. This is the world that Seraphina has grown up in. She’s recently moved to the city and taken a job as assistant to the court musician, even though her Secret means that she must keep to herself, trusting no one and desperately lonely. A close friend of the family and her teacher, Orma, is a sarantras who has the special scholar’s license not to wear the visible badge. From dealing with him, she has learned to understand how dragons think – a Vulcan-like mindset that prizes scientific calculation and considers emotion dangerous and unreliable. This skill brings her to the attention of Prince Lucian Kiggs, a bastard engaged to Princess Glisselda, granddaughter of the still reigning queen who made the treaty in the first place. Her musical skill, meanwhile, was on display at the funeral for the much-loved prince whose was recently found murdered in dragon-like fashion in the wilderness. The talent lands her a position teaching Princess Glisselda harpsichord, while Kiggs decides that she’s the perfect person to assist in the investigation of the prince’s death. In her personal life, Seraphina’s mind is inhabited with people, some more and some less human in shape, who will take over her mind with visions if she doesn’t carefully visit and talk to the avatars of them in the garden she’s created for them in her mind. She’s always assumed this was her mind just being a little weird on her – until she meets one of them in person.

Seraphina is a character after my own heart. My lonely teen soul had a hard time identifying with any character for whom making friends came easily, and Seraphina’s loneliness brought me right back to that time. Happily for her, by the end of the book she’s found a happier place, one that felt honestly won. There was also a lot about music, and just reading about her playing the oud without her plectrum made me smile in geeky recognition. OK, I’ve never played an oud or used a plectrum, but I loved that Hartmann used real historical instruments, and Seraphina and I had flute, voice and keyboard in common. This is set in a beautifully realistic Renaissance world with a saint-based religion. It’s full of politics, music, personal discovery as well as the dragons, with some romance thrown in for good measure. While there is a villain in the end, for the most part, the sides are drawn in shades of gray, with neither humans nor dragons being the Enemy, and understandable motives on all sides. We have it in teen, and while Seraphina really is going through teen problems, the sex and violence are both low enough to make this fine for advanced younger readers. I would happily recommend this to anyone who identified with Menolly in Dragonsong.

I was very excited to win this from Charlotte’s Library several months ago. Anyone who, like me, read Graceling and Fire, or who heard about the massive competition for the ARCs of this book knows it was a big splash in the teen fantasy realm this summer. Still, since the book came with a request that I tweet about it and I don’t tweet, so I thought I’d review it.

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

In Cashore’s first book, Graceling, our heroes defeated the sadistic King Leck, whose Grace allowed him to force people to hurt themselves or others and believe that nothing bad was happening. They rescued his ten-year-old daughter, Bitterblue, and set her on the throne with a team of advisors. Now Bitterblue is 18 and trying to repair the damage her father did to the kingdom. We’re talking kidnapping girls from every village in the kingdom just as a start, so this is no small matter. Her advisors are for the most part men who served her father, as well. They have decided that what the kingdom needs is forwardthinkingness, so that nothing from Leck’s reign will be discussed or brought up for trial. All crimes committed during the reign are forgiven, because Leck could have forced any crime. But Bitterblue feels that she needs to know what her father did and what’s going on with the kingdom now if she is to do her job. She starts sneaking out at night, finding the hidden pubs where people tell stories, often obliquely related to what happened during Leck’s reign. The very first night she is out, she befriends two young trouble-makers, Saf and Teddy, giving her name as Sparks to protect her anonymity. Thus her trying to find out the truth starts out with lies, which always complicate matters. Katsa and Po make brief visits from time to time, but they are busy trying to topple evil kings in other nearby kingdoms, and so cannot stay. The more Bitterblue learns, the more she realizes that the problems in the kingdom are deep. They did not die along with Leck, and she must find out who among her advisors she can trust and who is perpetuating the problems. Bitterblue journeys through darkness trying to understand her father, comparing remembering and forgetting as paths to healing. There’s a lot of dealing with ciphers, as Bitterblue’s mother taught her the theories of ciphers in secret, and both her parents used ciphers to keep their secrets. And while Bitterblue’s darkness is dark indeed, there’s still light to balance it, from the beauty of art and the joy of friendship, with a bit of early romance. It was very satisfying to see Bitterblue find her way towards a more open justice. It’s not for reading when one needs unicorns and rainbows (one does, sometimes), but it is a hopeful treatment of a dark subject, with a most courageous protagonist.

A note: my teen librarian said she’d been hearing rumors of racism about this book. I read and read looking out for it, until finally at the very end, I found the passage that I think must have bothered people: a woman with dark skin is described as a monster. She is in fact Fire, the heroine of the book of the same name, and she is a monster not because of her skin color but because she has “unimaginable beauty and the ability to control minds”, as do other people and animals of various skin colors on the other side of the mountain. As usual, reading in context is helpful and highly recommended.

This book recently hopped in front of me and reminded me that I’d wanted to read it when it first came out a couple years ago.

Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson.
The original Toads and Diamonds tale by Perrault was in the big pale yellow book of fairy tales that I had growing up, and I remember it being one of my favorites. Thinking back, I wonder why – who would really want either flowers and jewels or toads and snakes falling out of her mouth? This novelization sets the story in a place very like India during the Mughal Empire, when the newcomers were not the English but monotheists. Diribani lives with her stepmother and stepsister Tana, in a house that is empty of servants and furniture since the death of Diribani’s merchant father. They’re a tight-knit family, despite not being blood relatives. One day at the well, the beautiful but clumsy Diribani prays to the Serpent Goddess and is granted a wish. She wishes for beauty, and finds herself with jewels and flowers dropping out of her mouth when she speaks. Tana, plain but kind, goes next and wishes for security for her family. She is given the gift of sacred snakes and lucky toads falling out when she talks. The gifts throw their lives into chaos. The governor of their town follows the new religion, which considers all magic evil witchcraft, has placed a bounty on snakes, formerly kept as rat catchers in every house, and wants to take Diribani hostage for the jewels. Perhaps luckily for Diribani, the prince is passing through and decides to take her instead. Meanwhile, Tana must flee for her life, taking temporary oaths at a monastery despite an unexpected offer of marriage from the boy she’s always secretly admired. Now separated from everyone they know and trust, both sisters must work out on their own what the goddess meant for them to do with their gifts. Neither of them doubts that they are gifts, not curses, meant for the good of all those around them – but how best to use them, and stay alive in the meantime? Woven through is the struggle to forge some sort of understanding between the rival religions, as well as the culture of the ancient stepwells of India. These I had never heard of before, and am now quite curious about. The ending might be a little easily romantic, but overall, I found this a beautiful retelling, faithful to the original while adding new depth to plot, characters and setting.

Here is what is really bothering me about this book right now: the first in the series was on one of the library reading lists for teens. I was trying to help a teen boy who’d read many of the popular series. He said, looking at the cover, “Oh. It’s a girl book.” Like this one, it features a large, beautiful photo of a girl. I have to say, as a “girl”, I find the cover appealing. But I don’t think it is a “girl book”. Yes, Digger is a girl, and yes, there’s a wee bit of romance. But mostly, it’s politics, spying, assassinations and murders - stuff I think my young patron would really enjoy if only he could get past the cover. If you’ve read the book, what do you think? Thoughts on covers limiting the potential audience?

Liar’s Moon by Elizabeth C. Bunce.

This is the sequel to Starcrossed, which I very much enjoyed last year. Our heroine, known variously as Celyn, Digger and Mouse, is back in the city, despite knowing that it’s really not a safe place for her to be. She’s out doing some perfectly straightforward thieving work one evening when she’s roughed up, arrested and thrown in the jail cell of Durrel Decath, the handsome noble who saved her life at the beginning of the first book. He’s in – but he claims unjustly - for the murder of his wife, the much older Talth Ceid, member of the powerful merchant family with mafia-like tendencies. This means that Digger can’t just try to get him out (as if that were simple); she also has to prove his innocence, or the Ceid family will be even worse for his health than the dank jail cell. The next morning, her bail is posted by her roommate, who was given the money and anonymous note telling him where she is. Her arrest, she learns, was a set-up by Durrel’s friend Raffin, recently and puzzingly a Greenman, or member of the Inquisition, solely to get Digger interested in proving Durrel’s innocence. In trying to solve the mystery, Digger uncovers a tangle of politics and mysterious people, including the beautiful Koya Ceid, the young and beautiful married daughter of the dead Talth. There are missing Sarists, the illegal magic users; the mystery of why Durrel’s father isn’t trying to help; unaccountable food shortages throughout the city; and rumors of the rebellion Digger was aiding in the first book advancing towards the city. Lots of politics, intrigue, danger, close escapes, Digger learning more about her own magic, and dramatic settings from the jail to high-class parties to the temple Digger’s thief god. Also just a hint of romance, as Digger might finally accept that the lover who was killed at the beginning of the first book a year ago is really not coming back. This really is perfect small-scale politics: the fate of the nation is really at stake, but there’s only a small handful of major players, mostly all known personally, turning the wheels for everyone else. There are only a couple of flat-out villains, including the dead Talth. Everyone else is a nicely real mixture of good and good motives gone bad. Everything fits together just so, and while Durrel may be saved by the end of the book, I was happy to read that it looks like there is more in store for Digger.

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins.

Sophie Mercer, age 16, is a witch. She’s lived all her life with her normal mother and never met her father, the warlock who passed on his powers. Like all Prodigium, Sophie’s had her powers since about age 12, but only now has she flaunted them in front of humans enough to be banished to Hecate Hall. Hecate Hall, popularly known as Hex Hall, is a boarding school/juvie center for magical teens off the coast of Georgia. The term Prodigium encompasses witches, were, shapeshifters, fairies and vampires, and Hex Hall has them all. But just because they’re all magical doesn’t mean they all get along, as Sophie finds when she’s assigned to room with Jenna, the school’s lone student vampire (though Lord Byron is one, and teaches English here.) Right away, Sophie finds herself in the middle of high school social drama. She’s saved from an out-of-control werewolf by the cutest boy in school, Archer. Archer’s dating the superficial but beautiful and popular Elodie, who wants Sophie, whose powers are strong if undeveloped, to join her coven, which needs four members. The coven’s previous fourth member, Holly, died last year under highly suspicious circumstances – drained of blood, with two small holes in her neck. It’s widely suspected that Jenna, who was Holly’s roommate, is responsible, but Jenna is scared and depressed and seems to be sincere when she claims that Holly was her best friend. Meanwhile, Sophie is finding that she knows nothing about the magical world that all the other kids have been raised in. She didn’t even know that her father was head of the Council, and as the Council is responsible for banishing teens and some adults to Hex Hall, that makes her pretty unpopular. Also, though she’s told that she has potential for great power, she can’t seem to control it. The plot thickens as more witches on campus start turning up dead or nearly dead. But if Jenna is innocent, who is really responsible? Were Elodie and her coven successful in their attempt at raising a demon last year, or has L’Occio del Dio, one of the ancient groups founded to wipe out all Prodigium, found a way to penetrate Hecate Hall’s formidable magical defenses? If Sophie doesn’t both learn how to control her powers and find out who is behind the killings soon, it will be too late: the killer is targeting the school’s most powerful witches, and she’s next up on the list. This reminded of Buffy in the very best way, with the felicitous combination of magic, almost-typical high school experiences and snappy dialogue, even if Sophie is on the other side of things. As an example, at one point Sophie is trying and failing to charm herself a ball gown, and describes one failed attempt as looking like “the really slutty bride of Cookie Monster.” Though it has spycraft instead of magic, the Gallagher Girl books have a similar combination of boarding school setting, danger and fun dialogue.

The second book in the series, Demonglass, intensifies everything, as Sophie travels to London with her father and has even less idea who might be trustworthy. But if Sophie might be somewhere on someone’s hit list in Hex Hall, in Demonglass, she’s clearly at the very top of at least one and possibly more, with, you know, the fate of all Prodigium instead of just the Hex Hall students at stake.

It occurs to me that I finished listening to Shiver, the first book in this trilogy, in early September of 2010, driving to and from the hospital. I didn’t get the books I read those couple months reviewed at all. And while I’d normally prefer to write the review of the first book of a trilogy rather than just the second, my memory is just not that good. And I just now got around to listening to this one.

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater. Read by Dan Bittner, Pierce Cravens, Emma Galvin, & Jenna Lamia. There isn’t really a way to tell this story without spoilers for the first book. In the first book, Sam, a young werewolf, and Grace, bitten as a child but somehow never turned, fall in love and risk it all to find a way to stay together, as Sam will otherwise just turn into a wolf and stay that way forever. A new werewolf, Jack, also attempts a cure but dies instead. And Sam is horrified to see the leader of the pack and Sam’s adopted father, Beck, turn up with a truck full of new werewolves to ensure a future for the pack.

In this book, it is March in Minnesota, freezing days alternating with warm. The narration also alternates between main characters, here four instead of Shiver’s two. The audio version of this is wonderful, as each is narrated by a different person. Sam is essentially secretly living with Grace in her parent’s house. This works because they are pretty classically neglectful parents, assuming that she is perfectly obedient without supervision and able to take care of herself (and them) on her own. Isabel, Jack’s sister, is struggling with Jack’s death. She’s the high school’s popular mean girl, but adversity has given her a prickly bond with Grace. Sam is still struggling some with what he learned about Beck in the last book, but more trying to trust in his cure enough to make plans for his own life and also to adjust to his role as the new leader of the pack in Beck’s absence. Everyone is waiting for warm weather to turn wolves human again and answer mountains of questions. Are Beck and Ulrich really permanently wolves? Did the new wolves, including Grace’s friend Olivia, survive the winter? Will the pack be able to survive the impact of Cole’s turbulent past? Will Sam and Grace remain undiscovered, and what will her parents’ reaction be if they find out? I was really wishing that I had more time in the car (something I rarely wish) so that I could finish this sooner. Stiefvater has for me a perfect combination of good characters, compelling plot, just detailed enough world, and beautiful writing. She’s able to make me believe that two teenagers could fall in love and know it’s forever, even when most of the time in real life, I’d advocate for waiting a bit longer. I love the shifting theories about how being a werewolf works – rules that, like real-life science, exist but aren’t easy to nail down. This is the middle volume, and so of course you’ll want to start at the beginning and end at the end. But even with all of that against it, this was a story that grabbed me and hasn’t let me go yet. I recommend this trilogy to anyone who enjoyed Twilight, especially Team Jacob, as supernatural romance done better.

[Cover for Shiver posted as well, because I find these covers so beautiful.]

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

Dear readers,
I very much apologize for my spotty posting as of late. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but these three factors are probably influencing things:

1. My deep dark secret (but totally legal according to work) is that I write these posts in slow moments between patrons on the reference (or youth or reader’s advisory) desks at work. Slow moments seem to have been few and far between of late.
2. Various health concerns (but! Minor and ordinary!) have kept little L. up at night recently. Somehow, my brain seems to have a lot more difficulty putting a coherent post together on less than six hours of sleep a night.
3. Lightning Bolt has now officially been diagnosed with dyslexia, which means that my to-read shelf is now crowded with titles like The Secret Life of the Dyslexic Child and The Twice Exceptional Child, as well as needing to re-read The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers. I dunno – are any of you, dear readers, interested in reviews of dyslexia books? I was thinking not, but let me know.
4. Tiredness and reading more professional book blogs leading to inferiority complexes regarding my little hobby blog. I have more followers that I know about on my little new Pinterest account than on the blog I've been posting mostly faithfully to for the last eight years. Hard to even put that in print, but there it is.

Anyway, I have been reading some more fun stuff, so here’s a bit.




Ranger’s Apprentice. Book 1: The Ruins of Gorlan. By John Flanagan. Narrated by John Keating. Will has grown up an orphan, raised in a group of foundlings sponsored by the Baron at Castle Redmont. Now all five of them are 15, and it is Choosing Day, time for them to be chosen as apprentices. Will is small and mischievous, but, believing that his father was a hero knight who died in the battle against the evil Morgarath, his dearest wish is to go to Battleschool and train to be a knight himself. All the other four foundlings are given their wishes, but Will is apprenticed to the Ranger Halt. Rangers are mysterious and much distrusted, even suspected of using black magic. Will is less than thrilled about this assignment, but as the alternative is field labor, he takes it. Of course the apprenticeship itself is lots of hard work, taking care of the menial tasks around the Ranger’s cabin as well as learning volumes of new things. He is learning things like tracking, how to stay hidden moving or holding still, how to use range weapons and to stay out of the line of battle if possible. The Rangers, it turns out, are spies of sort, spending their time in the wilds and small villages in and around the kingdom, keeping track both of political tides and the lay of the physical land. They are, in short, very cool, in a subtle way completely opposed to the flashy, bashy knights. Early on, Will’s story alternates with that of his rival from the castle, the big boy who made it to Battleschool. This boy is bullied very badly, and then takes it out on Will whenever they meet. In a plot turn that seemed inevitable from the beginning, events conspire to make these two the best of friends. Eventually he will proceed to help Halt and a former apprentice defeat some new monsters that Morgarath has sent forth in his latest bid for power.

I listened to this book on my own to see if it would be appropriate to share with my son, now seven, who loves all kinds of epic fantasy and battle-type things. And I came to the conclusion: he would love it. I am not comfortable sharing it for another couple of years at least, solely due to the strong and bullying subplot. That bullying was described in great and painful detail over multiple episodes. It was eventually resolved by Halt allowing Will to beat up on the bullies. While this is probably a very satisfying resolution for kids who have been bullied, it doesn’t seem a good solution to me. I don’t want to go on with the series myself without knowing that those types of unpleasant events wouldn’t continue. I felt with the five friends that Flanagan was assembling a crack gaming party, with a varied assortment of characters, each exceptionally good in a different area. None of these have yet been tapped in this first book, but there are ten books in the series, and I’m sure there are seeds for future plot points that I missed.

Despite my gut negative reaction to the bullying, it isn’t really any more violent than many other teen books, and there are a lot of good points to this book. It’s got constant action paired with a strong and likeable main character. Even though Will and his friends are all Above Average and it’s a fantasy, the skills are all ones that exist and could be useful in our world – no simple wand-waving. This series is aimed squarely at teen and perhaps pre-teen boys. Although most of the characters are boys, two of the five foundlings are girls, and they are given real, important careers as well, making it less gender-imbalanced than, say, LOTR. So far, there’s only the smallest hint of romance. All in all, not quite a series for me, but definitely one I’ll keep in mind for teen patrons and maybe even my son down the road a bit.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

This was the last Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling that I’ve read. I haven’t found any others, so unless one of you, dear readers, knows of another one, this is the last of the series.

Entwined by Heather Dixon. Dixon boldly sets the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in the Victorian era, which we can tell by the clothes and the customs. (The cover, while beautiful, is much less historically accurate than the story.) She manages to give many more of her twelve princesses distinct personalities, better than any of the other books except for Wildwood Dancing, where there were only five sisters to keep straight. Blessedly, she even named them alphabetically - Azalea, Bramble, Clover, Delphinium, Evening Primrose, Flora, Goldenrod, Hollyhock, Ivy, Jessamine, Kale and Lily – making them the first dozen princesses I was actually able to keep track of. But onwards to the story. It’s the night of the Christmas Eve Ball. Azalea, the oldest princess, is hosting, due to Mother’s illness. Before the ball starts, Mother calls Azalea to her room and makes Azalea promise on her mother’s silver handkerchief to take care of her sisters, as well as talking about dancing. At the ball, Azalea meets a somewhat rumpled but very kind young gentleman, Lord Bradford, and it’s immediately clear that this is not the last we’ll see of him. Interestingly, Azalea is princess in a figurehead monarchy. The kingdom is run by the Parliament, which gives the royal family an allowance that isn’t quite enough to keep up the rambling, ancient palace. They also make the final choice on the spouse of the heir, which will make our Princess hesitant in matters of the heart. The country is run this way in large part in reaction to the defeated High King D’Eath, who in ancient times (Medieval? Enlightenment?) ruled the kingdom about as kindly as one might expect, given a name like D’Eath. He it was who built the palace, filling it full of secret passages and enchanted objects. Most of these are no longer in the castle, though one animated silver tea set remains.

The ball goes all right, despite all of the younger siblings hiding in the Christmas trees to watch. But in the morning, they discover that their mother has died, leaving new sister behind. The King – their father, though they call him the King – does not tell them in person. He only tells them that they will be in strict mourning for a year: All black clothes. All windows draped, all clocks stopped, no going outside except for church or Royal Business, and no dancing. But dancing is the girls’ sanity, an essential part of their relationship with each other and with their mother. So when they discover that there is a secret passage in their room that takes them not to a storage room, as they’d been told it would, but to an obviously enchanted dancing pavilion, they are delighted. They don’t ask very many questions of the pale, obviously magical man who invites them to come every night, saying that he is the Keeper of the castle. The reader will likely be more wary of him, even if he tells them that he is an ancient enemy of the High King D’Eath, trapped by him in the walls of the palace. He starts out creepy and gets truly scary, though at first he only reveals this side to Azalea.

In spite of this, the book felt much lighter than Wildwood Dancing - still probably appropriate in the teen books, rather than youth, but leavened by comedic attempts to find suitable partners for all three of the oldest sisters. There is a lot of discussion of the actual dances, so this is the book I’d recommend to dancers. (It’s rather funny how many books about dancing princesses gloss over the actual dancing.) There’s also a lot of family relationships, as the girls try to negotiate a new relationship with the King, now their only parent, no matter how cold and strict. This turned out well, though I found the King’s conversion to kindness a little too glib to be completely convincing. In any case, the story came to an exciting and satisfying conclusion, with Azalea doing a significant part of the rescue of the sisters herself. I think it’s being marketed as a teen book because of the focus on romance, though I didn't find anything that would be inappropriate for older middle grade readers.

Fans of the book can find delightful princess Azalea paper dolls on the author’s website.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

The bloggers at The Book Smugglers reviewed The Princess Curse the same week I did, and said this was their favorite Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling. I’ve got one more retelling on hold – also mentioned in their post – and then I’ll be out, unless anyone has any further retellings they want me to read.

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier I’m including this book in my series on The Twelve Dancing Princesses, though it doesn’t have all the parts of that story and does have bits of a good many others put in. The story is told by Jena, the second oldest of five sisters aged sixteen to five. They live with their merchant father in an old castle, Piscul Dracului, in Transylvania. It’s nominally fifteenth century, but though I didn’t encounter any glaring errors in the time, the place setting felt much stronger than the time setting to me. Early on, Jena tells us about a formative event in her life, when she and her two older cousins, Costi and Cezar, were playing in the wood. They decided to be King of the Lake, King of the Land and Queen of the Forest. It was supposed to be just a game, but then Drăguţa, the legendary witch of the woods, appeared, offering to grant them their wishes for real. Costi drowned in the lake that day, and neither Cezar nor Jena has been the same since. Already we can tell that this is a much darker retelling than many.

The true story takes place ten years later. Jena’s faithful companion is a pet frog, Gogu, who rides on her shoulder and talks directly into her mind, where no one but she can hear him. Every month on the full moon, she and her sisters put on their finest clothes, hold their hands up to make a star with the shadows on the wall, and follow a secret passage to the Wildwood. This both is and is not the same woods outside their castle, but here they meet with the fairy folk – trolls and dwarves and all sort of people. They dance and talk; scholarly Paula mostly spends the time discussing arcane magical subjects with like-minded folk – and go back home in the morning refreshed by the contact with beauty and magic, though they know enough to be very careful in the magical realm.

This has been their life, and they have loved it, but things are changing. Their mother died long ago, and their father is in poor health. He goes off to the coast in hopes that the change of climate will heal him, leaving the girls and a pair of aging retainers in charge of the castle and surrounding lands. Money will be tight and finding enough manpower difficult, but Jena, who has been learning accounting at her father’s side her whole life, is determined to do a good job running the family business. Cousin Cezar starts visiting more and more often. He soon takes their money box and tells Jena that he will run both their personal and business finances. When the girls go to their Wildwood Dance that month, there is a group of Night People there, the pale people rumored to drink blood. Tati falls in love with one, and increasingly withdraws from the outside world. Both of these are frightening, and of course things go downhill from there. What amazed me about the writing was that even though there were vampires – and they were scary and threatening – the part that gave me insomnia was Cezar taking over the girls’ lives, saying he was doing it out of love for them while clearly doing it for the love of power. He was a real abusive human, not a fairy-tale villain, and that made him terrifying. Though I’m not a horror fan myself, this is what my husband says of the best of Clive Barker’s writing: there might be supernatural horrors galore, but nothing is scarier than a human gone bad.

When one of the Night People kills a village girl the same age as Jena, she feels responsible. Cezar, meanwhile, takes it as a sign that the Wildwood is encroaching too far on their lives. He determines to wipe out all of the Wildwood folk, by chopping down the entire forest if necessary. He starts nightly hunts with bands of villagers through the forest. Even though these roving bands make the monthly walk through the night forest more dangerous, Jena is determined to do whatever it takes to save both her sister and the Wildwood. The leader of the Night People has promised to give her answers, but can she trust him even that far? Her activities are not unnoticed by Cezar, who decides that the girls must be in league with the Night People, and who decides he will lock them in their rooms with a man to follow them if they won’t talk.

The question that Twelve Dancing Princess novels must answer is why the girls do it. This novel approaches the whole story inside-out from the usual telling, and so it’s clear from the beginning that the girls go every month because the Wildwood is the place they feel most at home. Instead, Wildwood Dancing is a quest for independence and self-determination, for a way to find in the real world the fulfillment they find in the Wildwood. Both the human and the magical characters feel particularly real. It might be a little scarier than I usually like my fairy tale retellings, but it was definitely beautifully done, with strong characters in a world of humans and magic both beautiful and terrifying.


Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .