Ever Not So Much

I love it when I find an author I really love because it makes picking out new books that much easier, I know if I pick up a book by a certain author I will probably very much enjoy it.  One of those authors is Gail Carson Levine.  Her retelling of Cinderella in Ella Enchanted is still one of my favorite books ever, and the Princess Tales are a book I get for every child I know and I have enjoyed her other books.  So you will understand a couple of years ago when she came out with a new book called Ever, I tried to wait until it came out in paperback, but was too impatient and happily brought my new book home.

The basic premise is pretty intresting.  A girl Kezi who loves to dance and is a weaver in the city of Hyte (which seems to be a Mediterranean type of place) catches the eye of Olus the god of wind.  Olus is part of a pantheon of Akkan gods and comes to know and love Kezi.  This troubles Kezi for many reasons, one of which she was raised to only believe in the god Admat as the only one god.  The other part of this story is how Kezi's father in a desperate attempt to save his wife makes a bargain with Admat that he will make a sacrifice of the first person to offer well wishes after his wife is well again.  Kezi's mother recovers and the first person to walk in the door is Kezi's aunt who had helped save her life as a young child.  To prevent her aunt from becoming the sacrifice Kezi speaks the words that will make her the sacrifice in place of her aunt.  After all this goes down the family gets 30 days with Kezi until they have to take her to the temple
and...well...kill her.  At first I thought it was a metaphorical sacrifice, like give her up to the temple to work or become a priestess or something, but nope they mean a literal sacrifice of her life.  Olus tries to find a way to save her and decides that the best way will be to make her immortal so that not only will she not be killed, but she can stay with him forever.  Kezi then goes on a strange quest/journey/test to become worthy of immortality.  Eventually she seems to gain it, but the final test is when she is sacrificed by her father and has to pretend to be dead to fulfill the oath.  After all of this she and Olus live happily ever after, never able to speak to her family or loved ones again.
I know this synopsis seems a little simplistic, but I felt that the book was a little simple and slow.  The story is told in alternating first-person switching between Kezi and Olus.  Sometimes the text gets a little confusing, seeming to skip parts, or double back to the same place.  I felt the characters were pretty flat with no real development (although Olus did have a few good lines) and I really wanted to know much more about the culture, religions and people in this book.  It was a very straight forward insta-love story with no real basis for eternal love other than it was convenient for the author.  I also found it disturbing how easily Kezi's father was willing to

sacrifice another humans life in exchange for his wife's, especially when he had no idea who the first person to walk through his door was going to be.  I think that this may have been a very cool idea to explore, what people believe and why, how far people are willing to go for each other and their beliefs, etc...but in the end it played a very small part in a strange simplistic love story between two teenagers. It seemed odd to almost ignore this huge thing to focus on puppy love.  I have read many reviews of this book and seen that people have both loved and hated it, so go ahead and read it and decide for your self.  I personally will probably not be reading this one again, and I wouldn't particularly recommend it for the younger crowd that I would usually target for Ms. Levine's books.  This has not turned me off of her books completely, the next book she wrote A Tale of Two Castles was actually quite entertaining and much more in the vein of writing I am used to seeing from her.  Overall the simple writing, the insta-love, the weird twisty journey that did not seem to fit the rest of the book made me not so huge a fan of this book.  I would give it 2 out of 5 beaded scarves.

What did you think of this book?  Did you love it or hate it?  Have you ever been disappointed by a favorite author before?  What do you think of human sacrifice in young adult novels?

Simply Enchanting

On a high school trip a long long long time ago I ran out of books to read, anybody who has been anywhere near me without some sort of reading material knows that this is just a disaster in the making.  So a huge search was sent out for a literary distraction resulting in a book that would become one of my all time favorites, Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. 

This book was my first full blown introduction to world of retold fairytales and it was wonderful! 

The story keeps all of the elements of the beloved Cinderella story, the dead beloved mother, fairy godmother, glass slippers, wicked stepmother, evil stepsisters, a midnight spell and of course the glass slippers.  While keeping all of the elements Ms. Levine completely recreates the world, situations, and characters in the book.  Ella (the main character) and Prince Char actually meet, know each other and fall in love through out the whole book, giving some actual plausibility to there happy ending which is always a sticking point in the old fairy tales (True lasting love at first sight...really?!?)  Ella's fairy godmother is also with her the whole time, making the reasoning behind the magical help also more realistic (at least as realistic as a magic fairy godmother gets).  This re-telling also involves ogres, giants, elves and an exceptionally bossy parrot.  The element that really ties it all together for me is the curse our heroine has been put under.  When she was born another fairy

heard her crying and gave her the "gift" of obedience and immediately ordered her to stop crying.  This "gift" had the effect of forcing Ella to obey any order or command given to her.  This leads to some very hilarious and tragic consequences and again goes a long way in making our feisty protagonist plausible (I'm using that word a lot, sorry to lazy to pull out my thesaurus)  I really like it when an author at least makes an attempt to explain some of the more bizarre aspects that are usually needed to get a story moving.  In the end Ella has her happily ever after, which is how it should be.  I really loved this book and have read it many many many times, in fact I've gone through about three copies of it :-)  If you like traditional fairytales, humor, retellings, or just a nice light read then go get this book!  There is a movie which I was very excited about 'cause I think this is a very filmable book and the cast was amazing (Hello Cary Elwes!) but I have to say I hated the movie, in fact if they hadn't called it Ella Enchanted I wouldn't have even known that is what it was supposed to be BLECH!  Anyways I give this book 10 out of 10 pieces of Godiva chocolate.

Do you think this book did a good job retelling Cinderella?  Was the movie as awful as I think it was?  Does my mixing of tenses mean I should go back to grade school English?