Dancing With Frogs and Frustration

Hello all of my lovely and hopefully caffinated readers.  This is gonna be a long rambling with lots of gushing and talking and comparing and happiness and...well, lets just get on with it shall we?  The book Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier.  I initially picked it up for its beautiful cover and then realized it was a young adult novel by the author of one of my favorite adult books Daughter of the Forest which I obviously loved.  This book was absolutely wonderful in so many many many ways.  But first as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Tatiana (Tati), Jenica (Jena), Iulia, Paula, and little Stela are five sisters who live high in the mountains in an old castle called Piscul Dracului (Devils Peak) in the far reaches of Transylvania (yes the same one our friend Bram Stoker set his famous tale in).  The castle sits on the edge of the wildwood, a place rumored to be filled with the folk from the Other Kingdom.  It is a wild, isolated place where the old ways still thrive and magic is still alive.  The girls know all this to be true because every night at Full Moon if they all place their hands just so, in the right place in their bed chambers a portal to the Other Kingdom opens.  Through this portal and across the lake named Taul Ielelor and known to the locals as the Deadwash the girls are

escorted by various denizens of this Other Kingdom.  Once their the girls dance, talk, mingle and play with various folks according to their interests and age.  Jena (who is our narrator for this story) is the level headed one, who while thoroughly enjoying her visits to the Other Kingdom, lays down rules to keep her and her sisters safe.  This includes not eating or drinking anything, staying in sight at all times and if one sister says it is time to leave, they must all obey with no hesitation. In this manner the girls have enjoyed themselves on many a Full Moon, dancing the night away and reveling in the magic.  On this particular trip things start to take a turn.  The Night People have been allowed into the fairy queens court and are very disturbing to Jena.  Even more disturbing is a young Night Person called Sorrow who seems to have taken an interest in Tati.  The girls head home happy and exhausted and having to say goodbye to their beloved father, who is a merchant and is very ill.  The doctor told him that if he is to survive he must find a warmer climate for the harsh winter.  He leaves the care of the castle, lands and goods to Tati and Jena, trusting them even though they are female.  He also asks his cousin Nicolae to help with anything the girls may need.  We then learn that many years ago Jena was playing with Nicolae's two boys Costi the elder son and Cezar the younger son.  They were playing in the wildwood near the Deadwash when they were approached by Draguta the witch of the wildwood.  She tells them if they give her something precious they can have their hearts desire.  Young Jena gives up a toy crown she had made and wants to be queen of the fairies.  Costi gives up the ring that is passed down to the heirs and wants to be King of the Lake.  Cezar does not say anything but before disappearing with the gifts Draguta says she understands and vanishes.  The children continue their game and it ends in tragedy when Costi drowns in the Deadwash.  Cezar tells a young Jena (who had her eyes covered the whole time) that Costi was pulled down by hands in the lake.  Fast forward back to the present and we come to learn that Cezar has never been able to let go of his angst and hatred for the Others who he holds responsible for his brothers death.  Jena also carries a pet frog by the name of Gogu with her.  He can speak to her in her mind and has been with her since after Costi died.  Nicolae is killed in a hunting accident leaving the overbearing Cezar in charge of his affairs and with their father gone, takes it upon himself to manage

Piscul Dracului as well.  He is angry, heavy handed and utter unwilling to believe that the girls can manage themselves.  To make matters worse Tati has fallen in love with Sorrow of the Night People and is wasting away with the want of him.  Jena tries desperately to regain control of her and her sisters lives, but she is thwarted at every turn. After a local villager is killed by a Night Person, Cezar's hate becomes inflamed and unreasonable.  He puts together hunting parties to hunt down the Others and decides to fell the wildwood.  Jena continues to try and protect her family and the Other Kingdom, but in a time and place where being female meant you were essentially a second class citizen she has little recourse.  Cezar's heavy handed matter comes to a head when he tries to get Jena to marry him.  Her refusal just angers him more and he tells them he knows about their trips to the Other Kingdom.  To prove it and get information he pays a local villager to be locked in the room and follow them.  Jena hunts down Draguta and obtains a sleeping potion to give to the villager and their chaperone.  She also kisses Gogu who turns into a man. This man is one Jena has seen becoming a monster in a magic mirror and it frightens her thoroughly.  She tries to get the man to tell her who she is, but since he can't talk she decides not to risk it and leaves her old friend behind.  In the Other Kingdom the girls learn that Sorrow is actually a human who along with his sister Silence was taken by the Night People long ago.  He has been set a task that if he completes by the next Full Moon will allow him to marry Tati and have her live with him in the Other Kingdom. This delights Tati, and makes her sisters sad as they know they will not be able to see her again as this is their last trip to the Other Kingdom.  The man that Gogu has turned into is also their, the Queen releases the silence spell and he claims to be Costi, not drowned just turned into a frog.  Jena obviously has a hard time believing this and Costi leaves hurt. After a sorrowful goodbye, Jena's sisters encourage her to go after Costi/Gogu, Jena misses him but runs into Draguta who tells her that she gave the three children their wishes when they were little.  Jena could not be the real queen of the fairies so she was allowed to come visit the Other Kingdom, Costi was made a frog, which is King of the Lake, and also to teach him some humility.  Cezar it turns out wanted to be King of the Land and his most precious possession was his brother Costi...yep.  The girls go back home to an enraged Cezar who was thwarted in his attempts to gain access to the Other Kingdom.  Costi shows up, there is a bit of a showdown and Cezar runs away.  Costi will not speak to Jena, though he is kind enough to help her with the castle.  Tati takes a turn for the worse, refusing to eat or sleep, just wasting away in fear for her Sorrow.  To try and rally her Jena goes and makes up with Costi and they return to find Sorrow injured but with his quest complete if he can just get to Tati.  The sisters say their good-byes and she is whisked of to be Sorrows wife in the Other Kingdom.  The remaining girls are overjoyed when their father returns home to them safely and they all continue to live mostly happily ever after.

Told you this was gonna be a long one, and we haven't even started yet!  I very much enjoyed this book.  To start with the blending of one of my favorite fairytales Twelve Dancing Princesses with the famous Frog Prince tale was pretty flawless.  I loved how the author kept so many classic elements from the tales while making a completely new and engaging story that showed some of the older, darker origins of these tales.  Lets talk about the sisters.  First we have Tatiana the oldest, a beauty and one that becomes our typical helpless princess.  The fact that among other types the author kept in a classic damsel pining for her love story was kind of ballsy and and interesting choice.  She makes Tati sympathetic, yet at the same time she clearly shows how her uselessness and lack of engagement is not to be lauded as "oh that poor beautiful girl, pining for her lost love", but as a burden and worry to her sisters who desperately need her at her best, this seems a realistic portrayal of the all to real phenomenon of people abandoning all for love. Jena, our heroine is not flawless, she is bossy, a bit cold, and a bit of an over thinker.  Her main talent is being level-headed which is portrayed as a good thing.  She is able to see the big picture and not become lost in the pretty veneer of a thing.  That being said she also is not able to just let things be, she fights her instincts and

sometimes makes herself work twice as hard as she needs to.  Her happy ending comes after the end of much hardship and pain, but it is so very apparent that she loves her sisters, her people and her land and will do what she needs to to protect them.  Iulia is kind of awesome, she is the "sexy" one of the bunch.  A 13 year old girl/woman who is trying to grow up, but does not have any woman to guide her.  She wants to use what she has, she is not ashamed of her body and realizes that it is an asset, yet does not yet have the wisdom on the best way to use it.  She is sometimes coy, sometimes strong, she is a great example of a girl becoming a woman.  Paula is a bit of a stereotype, the scholar with glasses who would rather talk philosophy with the old folk then dance. That being said, she is the one who steps up and takes charge when the older girls start getting caught up in their own personal problems (and as a reward the author gives her her own story in the next book Cybele's Secret) she also has the best sense of humor.  Stela is the youngest by a couple years and add's a touch of innocence to the proceedings, yet is treated as an equal member of the sisterhood, she is encouraged to add her own opinion to the mix while being allowed to have a childhood.  This mix of personalities is used to great advantage in this story, adding various voices, opinions, and view points to every situation.  On to the FRUSTRATION!  This book made me feel so frustrated, not the story, but for the girls.  The author stayed true to the time period and place where a female only had as much power as her father, husband, brother or protector allowed her.  In our story the girls are given much freedom and trust by their unusual father who never remarried after their mother died.  His absence and the death of Nicolae left the care of the girls in the hands of Cezar who thought he had their best intentions in mind when he essentially made them prisoners in their own home.  Since he was not only their closest relative, but also the owner of a powerful house he pretty much had complete control and the girls would have had little recourse.  Jena especially is frustrated by this short leash and the writer makes her frustration so palpable and so hopeless and so realistic that I found myself feeling frustrated for her.  This is good, because a lot of times I am frustrated AT a character, their is usually something you can do, or try to do and so many times an author will create a stupid and

unrealistic situation just to further the story, or put our poor heroine in some dire straights when all they would have to do was make a choice to woman up.  This is not the case with this story.  In this story Jena and most of her sisters do everything in their power to change this impossible situation (except Tati...but even her self-induced helplessness makes a point).  I will say the solution to the girls problems being a frog turning back into a long lost prince who just happens to be in love with Jena is a bit deus ex machina for my taste, but the author set up the story well so it was there the whole time if you were looking for it.  The cover which was done by the talented Kinuko Y. Craft who's cover art has inspired many book purchases and has made my bookshelves just that more beautiful.  In summation, the setting was wonderful, the story fantastic, the characters fully realized, the pages kept turning, I loved it.  I recommend this for fairy tale lovers, kick-ass heroine lovers, history lovers, and book lovers.  I give it 9 out of ten beaded wire crowns!
What fairy tales would you like to see merged together?  What do you think of the author putting in the various types of heroines?  How much help can a heroine get and still be kick ass?  Do you want to go find the Others with me?