The Storybook of Legends by Shannon Hale

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
On one page I read, "She treaded water" - the past tense of 'to tread' is 'trod' (and also 'trodden'). It's not 'treaded' - not unless she put a tire tread on the water, which I guess is entirely possible if you can do magic....
Later I read, "But it's not like I can just look up in a phone book..." In context, this should have read, 'look her up in a phone book', or depending on what precisely the author meant, 'look in a phone book'. Either way something was wrong here!
Past tenses seemed to be a problem for Shannon Hale because later I also read, "Apple reached out and pet the dragon's tail...." This should have read 'petted'. While language is dynamic and changes over time, perhaps now faster than ever in history, some authors don't seem to get that there's actually a difference between reported speech and narration. Reported speech can be completely informal. Narration and description need to give at least a nod to grammar and correct tense!

Quite frankly, this book was an embarrassment to me and has been kept hidden away on my shelf like some sort of family black sheep. Finally I decided to take it out and read it and damn the torpedoes, and it has turned out to be highly entertaining, inventive, amusing, and fully-engaging. It's one of the best books I've ever read. Note that it's the Storybook of Legends, not leg ends, which would be quite effete....

I should not have been surprised, I guess, because I've had a positive history with its author Shannon Hale. This is, I think, the fourth or fifth thing of hers I've read and liked, but strictly speaking, it's not wholly original with her. The story has its roots in Mattel's monster dolls line. From that they created a fairy-tale doll line, and from that came a web series, a movie, and these books. Shannon Hale was, I guess, commissioned to write this one, and she did an amazing job with it. This was definitely my kind of novel even though it's not my kind of age range!

I can't promise to follow the whole series (I'm not a series sort of a guy), and especially since other volumes are written by other authors, but it was a highly enjoyable read, surprisingly. I came to admire the author both for her inventiveness and her winning sense of humor.

It's a sort of middle-grade fairy-tale fantasy in a series, no less! The series is called 'Ever After High', and it's about these children of famous fairy-tale characters returning to school after the holidays. Raven Queen is the daughter of the Evil Queen from "Snow White". Apple White is the daughter of Snow White. Cedar Wood is the daughter of Pinocchio, and Madeleine Hatter is the daughter of the Mad Hatter. Cerise Hood is the troubled daughter of red Riding Hood.

I think Maddie is my favorite character because she is so unapologetically nuts, and at several points actually has exchanges with the narrator of the novel, which I loved. Raven runs a close second as my favorite, and is an outstandingly intelligent and strong young woman. She's balking at being an evil queen like her mother was. She's supposed to feed the poisoned apple to Apple, but she doesn't want to be evil, and this makes people nervous because they think if she doesn't fulfill her role, then others' stories might fail and the whole of fairyland might collapse, so the plot is engaging, too.

The book ain't cheap! It was priced at fifteen dollars, but I recall picking it up at bargain discount at Costco several years ago. It intrigued me, but it seemed so juvenile that I hid it away until now. It's a hardcover which was printed in all these pastel shades, with the edges of the paper colored, and the pages having a colored border. After several years of looking at it and turning away, I decided to take the plunge and it proved so entertaining that I wished I had not let it sit for so long! It was a breath of fresh air and I enjoyed it for its irreverence and endless diversion - never boring, always...entrancing! I commend it fully.

The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, LeYuen Pham

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by the Hales and illustrated exquisitely by Pham, this short, large print chapter book tells the story of a cute little princess who fights monsters under the guise of The Princess in Black! Definitely empowering, especially for female readers, I felt this was an inspired story designed to quell fears of monsters under the bed and at the same time tell a story to entertain - and it's not all about the princess! There's something in there for boys, too. It was well-worth the reading.

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Rating: WORTHY!

I’m a captive audience in my car with a commute that’s not overly long, but which isn’t short either, so I listen to audio books and I tend to take more risks and experiment more with this format than any other. Consequently I have more fails with this format than any other, but it’s worth it to find the occasional gem, and one such book was this one. If there’s one thing I detest in writers it’s a sheep mentality. Instead of coming up with something original (or a refreshing take on an older theme as, say, The Hunger Games trilogy or the Harry Potter heptalogy represented), most authors, particularly in YA, jump right on someone else’s band wagon and turn out sorry clones of existing work. barf. I prefer the author who tosses out cliché and trope and takes the road less traveled, as I tried to do in Femarine, and as this author does here, which is yet another variation on the same theme I varied.

Another audio book to review - this time positively. My problem with princess stories - the kind where a prince is essentially holding a lottery for a bride - is several-fold, not least of which is what it says about the prince: he's so vacuous and shallow that he thinks he can get a suitable lifelong partner in such a critical role through this haphazard means? The other side of that coin is what it says about the princess-to-be in that she's so shallow or so desperate that she's willing to sell out for this guy she never met and will be expected to marry before she even knows him. It's truly pathetic.

That doesn't even begin to cover trope and cliché either. These stories tend to be larded with them: that the most humble, plain, and simple girl gets to win, or alternatively that the girl who least cares about or least expects to win gets to win because she's a special snowflake, and the only one who truly understands the prince.

There's also a really pretty girl who everyone expects to win, but who doesn't because it turns out that the plain-jane is prettier somehow! There's the really dumb girl who is the only one who thinks she will win, and there's a really bitchy girl who we all know will never win. There's also the truly sweet girl who becomes the main character's bestie, and who dreams of marrying the prince, but who doesn't honestly believe she will win. She ends up marrying the captain of the guard or the king's younger brother or something like that. It's tedious. It's been done to death, and any author who continues to churn out this kind of story with no variation and no twist and nothing new to offer is the really dumb girl. Any author who thinks he or she can make a trilogy out of this trash is beyond dumb.

So what I look for on the very rare occasion when I read a story like this, is what I tried to provide in Femarine: something significantly different. This audio book was such a story. It impressed me and continued to impress me because it continued to inject new ideas into this trope and thereby stirred it up significantly. There were some bits that were a touch too rambling and boring, but these were few. Most of the time it kept adding the twists to make it entertaining and engrossing.

What I liked about it was that Miri, the main character, was smart, but not particularly special except in that she learned. The value of books was am important part of the story. They actually played a role in the story and in Miri's growth, and were not just lazy short-hand used by the author to say "Hey, look how smart my character is!" Miri was always learning, and this is what made her stand out from far too many spastic princesses in other stories I've read or read about, and who show zero growth or real smarts.

I liked that the girls weren't the usual suspects in these stories, but the daughters of quarriers (and some of the girls were quarry workers themselves) in a pit which produced a special high quality stones used for important buildings in the cities down the mountain. I didn't like the 'us versus them' mentality (mountain people against lowlanders, where the mountain people were considered primitive and dumb and the lowlanders urbane and cultured), but I did like that the girls were not in fixed groups or fixed mentalities. Relationships changes and morphed, and the bitchy girl wasn't always the bitchy girl. The ending was very different from what you might expect and really turned the story again from the course you might expect.

The thing was though, that while I always feared that this story would go straight to hell in a hand-basket, I always had the feeling that it could completely capture me, and this is what it did in the end, so I recommend this for those of you who, like me, are tired of trope and ready to quit with cliché. Yes, it did have some examples still of that kind of mentality - that the girl must end up with the boy for example, but overall it was different enough and enjoyable enough, and above all unpredictable enough that I consider it a very worthy read. Or listen - Laura Credidio does a decent job of rendering the characters, although her voice was a bit annoying at times.

Lastly, one thing I don't get about this is that it's part of a series. Why? This was a great story and it was told well, and it came to a satisfying conclusion. Why did the author feel the need to ruin all that by dragging it unnaturally, kicking and screaming, into a series? Is she so lacking in imagination that she can't think of a new idea to write about? Let it be known that I have no intention of following the series. As far as I'm concerned, this book stops here!

Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, Nathan Hale

Rating: WORTHY!

This one appealed to me from the title, to a glance through the pages in the bookstore, to reading the entire thing cover to cover in one sitting. It was awesome. The art work was understated, but still colorful, lively, and playful. The writing was humorous, adventurous, easy to read, and thoughtful. The title character is an original, strong female character of the kind I really like to find in my fiction even more than I do in real life - because I know they exist in real life, but I have a really hard time finding them in fiction!

Rapunzel is kick ass, but not in a mean-spirited, or overly brawl-y way. She's smart, inventive, brave, and dedicated. The relationship she develops with the male she eventually hooks up with is realistic, and contrary to the way far too many YA novels would have it, Rapunzel doesn't wilt and fade away upon the arrival of a male. She takes charge and assumes a leadership role, and he goes along with it supportively as the cover makes crystal clear. I recommend this couple!

The setting of this German fairy tale in the wild west struck a sour note with me, but it worked out in the end, so I was willing to give that a bye. Rapunzel frees herself and starts determinedly to free her mother from the mines. She's derailed several times on this quest, but with her beau's help, and after some spectacular challenges along the way, she eventually gets there.

Note that this story preceded the Disney movie Tangled - which curiously appears to share a lot of traits with it (Rapunzel's facility with her hair, her hooking up with a thief rather than a prince, her being withheld from and in ignorance of her true mother, and so on). Disney's movie was fun, but this original is more fun.