We know the endings, we know the plot, and often times we know the characters and the stories so well that they've become second nature to us. It's the fairy tales we've grown up with and the classics we were told to read when we were in school. But can there really be anything added? Can new imaginatorim be pulled from the stories to give us something new that we don't already know? A fair ponderance, I believe. In that light, fairy tales retold and classics revisited were my choice this month. A few fairy tales such as Cinderella, the Princess and the Frog, and the Little Mermaid were on the list along with a bit of Jane Austen and Jane Eyre. As to be expected, some of them were really well done and others failed miserably.
My two favorites of the month were Cinder by Marissa Meyer and Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon. Cinder, obviously a take on Cinderella, kept the basic premise of a young girl who lives with her evil stepmother, meets the prince, and the prince is giving a ball. But set the story in the future in China, let Cinderella be a cyborg, have a plague rage across the world threatening the life of the entire civilization, and that's where Cinder places the reader. I admit that my sci-fi senses were tingling and enjoyed the book all the way through. The fairy tale aspect was still firmly in place but the book goes deeper and more intense than the story that Disney had told us. Cinder is only the start of this series. There are to be three more books after this one. I'm excited to see where the series continues and if the author does end the series with the typical fairy tale ending or not. Whether or not, you're a fan of sci-fi, it was really fun, well written and worth the read.
Mermaid gave an interesting look at The Little Mermaid. The main character was not Ariel but Lenia. What was brilliant was that the book went back and forth between two princesses, the human, Margarthe, and the mermaid, Lenia, whose lives intersect early in the story when Lenia saves the prince from a shipwreck. Margarthe is on the shore and takes care of him from there.
Unlike my favorite Disney movie, the book was a lot darker than I expected. Lenia does not simply loose her voice but rather has her tongue cut out by the evil sea witch. The prince was not the adorable Prince Eric of my childhood but rather a womanizing Prince who you eventually feel compassion for. The story flowed really well between the two perspectives. Because of these two simultaneous perspectives, there's a tension that arises as to who we want to win the Prince's heart. Although we want the prince to fall for the mermaid, Margarthe is a princess who has been promised to the prince to unite two kingdoms in marriage. Her blight is also one that the reader becomes sympathetic toward which heightens that tension.
I had wished the book had been a bit longer which I don't often say. There was a lot of set up that needed to happen but the climax and resolution happened so fast. I wouldn't have minded a few more chapters to allow the conflict to continue just for a wee bit longer.
Cinder and Mermaid were wonderful. However, there were two books that I was not a fan of at all, both of which took classic novels and tried to present something new. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was brilliantly done so I was eager to give Jane Slayre a try. But when the co-author tried to work zombies, werewolves, and vampires all into one classic novel, the attempt failed miserably in my opinion. The only part that made "sense" in the Jane Eyre world was that the crazy wife in the attic was a werewolf. That worked but the rest of them, the zombies and the vampires, were just awkwardly added, felt out of place and forced into the prose unlike some of the better attempts to take classic novels and add the supernatural creatures to them. I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't better executed.
The other book that I wanted to throw across the room after I finished it was Prom and Prejudice. I knew the minute I picked it up that it was going to be bad but I didn't realize just how poorly done it was to be. The first problem is that prom as the "marriage aspect" of the book which just does not function the same way. The other problem was that the author kept most of the names the same. That's fine but when the story is poorly executed, it's almost a crime to use the same names as the original Jane Austen novel. On top of that, Darcy was way too nice way too early. He needs to seem sympathetic so that Lizzie has that reason to fall for him but Darcy was portrayed as a little stuck up but still way too nice. It's books like this that deepen my belief that people should not mess with Jane Austen. Do not tell me what happened after the wedding, do not give me another character's perspective, just leave Jane alone. That's not to say that there have not been some good re-tellings of Pride and Prejudice because I'm sure there have been but Prom and Prejudice is not one of them.
On that note, Austenland was a really fun read. The main character, Jane, gets a present from her aunt to go to Austenland where everything is done in period and she has a "Jane Austen" experience. It was an easy and fun read, certainly worth it. Beauty and Enchanted were also fun fairy tales to step into. Enchanted included a lot of different fairy tales beginning with The Princess and the Frog and then went on from there.
I have always loved the fairy tales and my classics. It may be that those are the imaginatorium stories that have ruined my own imagination and given me false hopes and dreams but at the same time, those are the stories that we cling to. Those are the kind of stories that we can get lost in when the real world seems to be caving in or we need a distraction from everything else. I was thrilled to find some excellent retellings and some really fun reads this month.
We've hit the halfway point. It is now halfway through the year which I feel is time for re-reads and sequels. There are some books that I've wanted to re-read for a while such as The Hobbit, The Book Thief and a few others. There are also some series that I need to read the sequels to such as the Hunger Games. I'm excited to get lost in my favorite books again and see what happens from there.
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