Enchanted by Alethea Kontis

Title: Enchanted
Author: Alethea Kontis
Publisher: Harcourt
Rating: WORTHY!

Enchanted is the beginning of a trilogy of which I read book 2 (Hero before I read this one. It really doesn't matter. It turns out that you do not need to have read this volume before reading the second, but it does help a bit. Unfortunately, there was nothing on the cover of the other book or in the fly-leaf blurb which gave any indication that it was a sequel, so there was no way to tell until I got it home from the library and started paging through it.

This is pastiche of fairy tales re-written, featuring a huge family which lives in a home that looks a lot like a shoe. All of the female children are named after days of the week, but the male children have regular names like Peter and Jack. I spit on the ground at yet another trope cliché "adventurous" male named Jack - honestly? Can we not use our brains here? Must it be always Jack? Must we have the boys names so macho? Why not just name them Dick 1 and Dick 2 and have done with it?

I don't know why the author chose to pursue such a genderist approach to the nomenclature, but volume two was a good romp with a really strong female character as the main protagonist, so I'm willing to allow her more leeway here than I normally would. It turns out that it's actually a big advantage from the writer's PoV in my having read the second before the first!

The second volume is about Saturday, but this novel begins with the first day of the week: Sunday, who is given to keeping a diary, which she writes while squirreled away in a hidden part of the forest near her home. One day, she's interrupted in her pursuit by a talking frog. Yes, she does kiss it (twice!), but no it doesn't instantly turn into a prince either time. Unlike your common-or-garden fairy tale, It's not that simple in Enchanted.

The nursery rhyme from which the daughter's names and personalities are taken is this:

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 loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay
(from wikipedia)

I can see where you could get a few interesting stories from that rhyme.

We also get the Magpie rhyme:

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a story never to be told
Eight for Heaven
Nine for Hell
Ten for the Devil himself.

There are some annoyances/oddities in this volume. One is that the author mentions that one of the girls visits dead Tuesday's grave, which is situated miles from their home. I don't get that. Why is it so far away? Why isn't the grave in the family's back yard or at the local church? This made no sense to me.

Another bizarre-ity was the author's somewhat inconsistent approach to her writing style. On page three, she uses the grammatically correct "...to whom..." as part of the frog's speech, which seemed to me to be almost laughably pretentious, since people don't actually speak like that. Granted if the frog is a prince, then maybe he would, but it's still pretentious; however, it wasn't that alone which got to me, it was the combination of that on page three and then the phrase "chaise lounge" on page 4 which triggered my gag reflex!

She has the technically correct 'whom' in speech but then a page later gets the phrase wrong? Yes, I know it's typically American to use this phrase, but it's incorrect. The phrase is from the French, chaise longue, same letters, different spelling and it means, quite literally, a long chair, but why go to the trouble of getting 'whom' correct and then not care about using an authentic phrase instead employing a lazy (if not ignorant) Americanism? It struck me as inconsistent. But what the hell? Moving right along.

It turns out that Sunday can't reconstitute the prince because he was under a special curse which only the cursing fairy could lift, and curiously enough, while Sunday is otherwise occupied, the term of the curse ends and the curse lifts. The author does a rather appealing job of describing how it is to return to humanity after spending a year or two as an amphibious creature of the froggy persuasion, but at least you can say he has delectable legs...No? OK.

Determined to track down Sunday, the prince succeeds only to discover that the household in which she lives is one which would probably hate him if its members knew his true identity, due to events in the past, to the nature of which we're not party. In his anonymity, he receives kindness from Seven, the mistress of the tower house, and then makes his way to his castle, where - once he's recognized and admitted, he declares that there will be a triple ball - at which Sunday, once she learns of it through her mother, declares that she will most certainly not be in attendance, so we know exactly how that's going to go!

She does of course attend, and she does meet the prince, but of course she recognizes him not! He doesn't reveal his self immediately either, preferring to see if she can like him as a man as opposed to an ambiguous ambidextrous amphibian. Chapter 11, when they first meet and dance is one of the most moving pieces of writing that I've ever read. Kontis outdoes herself there. I recommend the novel for that alone.

And that's all I'm going to reveal of this one! This novel as a very worthy read, and I'm now looking forward to the third volume in this series.

Hero by Alethea Kontis

Title: Hero
Author: Alethea Kontis
Publisher: Harcourt
Rating: WORTHY!

This novel, I learned after I had picked it up from the library and got it home, is book 2 of a series. There's nothing on the cover to indicate this. Fortunately, it appears that you can read this volume without having read the first one; at least I got into it without too much trouble. It appears to be a mash-up of fairy tales, and its predecessor, Enchanted which I also review, is even moreso. There is a third novel in this series titled Dearest which I've not yet read, but which I plan on doing so as soon as I get a chance!

The main protagonist is Saturday, one of several sisters named after days of the week. All of her sisters seem to have a magical power, but Saturday does not. She does, however, have a charmed sword, which helps heal her when she's sick or injured, and which gives her vigor and strength when she uses it, but only if she can remain in contact with it. This wonderful weapon doesn't seem to avail her much, however, when she's picked up by a giant bird and delivered to the mountain lair of an evil witch who is seeking revenge on the lone male sibling in this family, Jack Woodcutter.

Yes, indeed! So why did the witch pick up Saturday Woodcutter? Well, the witch is blind and not too smart! So now Saturday has to perform three impossible tasks and then reveal to the witch where the eyes are that Jack cut out of her head. Saturday's sword is confiscated by the witch, so she's not exactly at her best. Fortunately, she does have Peregrine, a guy who is also a prisoner, and who is on Saturday's side. The witch has him in a dress because she thinks Peregrine is her not-so-dead daughter. He's also apparently cursed with a need to let his feminine side have free reign. I loved this reversal of what have become tediously tired roles in YA fiction, especially in the dystopian and fantasy genres.

The relationship between Peregrine and Saturday is remarkable, unusual, and most welcome. Indeed, everything about this novel is most welcome because it is such a departure from the norm. Peregrine, rather than being the studly, hair-in-his-eyes, muscular paragon of manliness in run-of-the-mill YA literature, takes a back-seat to the somewhat androgynous Saturday, who is strong (and in many ways), and represents a huge spit in the eye of your typical weak, boring, and clueless YA teen female main character.

Peregrine and Saturday get to know each other as they interact in the endlessly winding cavern tunnels of the giant mountain in which both are held prisoner. They're accompanied by Betwixt, an unpredictably morphing chimera who is one of the more amusing characters here and who is also a prisoner. Indeed, it would seem that every character in the mountain lair is a prisoner, even the Lorelei - the evil demon witch - herself.

The witch has an escape plan which Saturday unwittingly switches into high gear, but even as the witch sets about quickly moving her plan forwards, Saturday begins to learn two important things: first that she's not as bereft of magic as she has grown up believing herself to be, and second, that if the witch succeeds in her plan, it will most assuredly bring about the end of the world.

I have a new strong, female character to add to my collection: Saturday Woodcutter, who is a breath of fresh air. This is the kind of woman we need far more of in YA fiction. She's feisty, can-do, strong - not merely physically, but mentally, and she's amusing, interesting, and engaging. I couldn't have asked for a better main character.

I highly recommend this novel and look forward to reading more volumes in this series.