Magic Sleep

Hi all, how is your fall going?  Have you broken out the boots yet, or are you stuck with 90 degree heat like I am?  To make myself feel better about this icky heat, I'm gonna ramble about a book 'cause who doesn't love a good rambling.  The book is The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey and is part of the Elemental Masters series.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Marina Rosewood is born to Alanna and Hugh Rosewood, two Earth Masters who have looked forward to her birth very much.  They are having a private christening party where several of her godparents...who also happen to be Elemental Masters are giving her various gifts that compliment her own Water powers.  Just as they last godparent is getting ready to give her gift, Hugh's estranged sister Arachne (how is that for a villain name?) curses the child to die before her 18th birthday.  The family understandably freaks out a bit, but one last godparent, Elizabeth, a Water Master is able to modify the curse so that if the curse is not activated by the time the child is 18, the curse will rebound on Arachne, and if the curse is activated, then Marina will only sleep until a cure is found.  To try and keep the curse from taking effect, Mariana is sent right then and there with Margahrita (Earth Master), her husband Sebastian (a Fire Master) and her brother Thomas (also an Earth Master) to live in an artist cottage in the woods.  Marina is raised with much love, art and magic by these three until tragedy strikes when she is 17.  Marina's parents die in an "accident" and she become the ward of her aunt Arachne who summons the child to live with her.  Marina is hauled away from her godparents and the only life she has ever known and thrust into a "high society" world that she is entitled to.  Arachne determines that for some reason Marina is clueless about the curse and has no real idea why her parents sent her away.  Arachne keeps a very tight leash on her niece under the guise of prepping her to enter society.  Marina's only break is when she goes to the vicar to work with him.  Marina meets Dr. Andrew Pike, an Earth Master who has built a sanitarium dedicated to actually helping patients instead of just warehousing them.  He also takes in children with Elemental Magic that do not have the benefit of parents or guardians who understand that the kid's are not crazy, just gifted.  Marina helps Dr. Pike when she can and the two fall in love.  Meanwhile Arachne and her odious (I love that word) son Reggie split their time between trying to keep Marina in line, and working on their dark arts in which they steal magic from those who have it by slowly poisoning them in their pottery factories.  Eventually Arachne activates her spell by getting Marina to accidentally prick her finger on a needle hidden in her childhood cradle.  Marina's godparents find her and along with the vicar, and Dr. Pike help Marina defeat Arachne when they are both pulled into the spirit world.  Archacne is defeated, Marina FINALLY learns about her own history and they all live happily ever after.

In case you didn't get it from the synopsis, this installment of the series was based on the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty.  Of all the books I've read in this series so far this is the most straight forward retelling, with the story following very closely to the original tale.  That made it...I don't want to say boring...but maybe a tad to predictable for my taste as I could pretty much figure out exactly what was going to happen every step of the way.  This was also one of those books that uses a lack of information to further the story.  The whole thing pretty much hinged on Marina not knowing of the curse and ways to counter it.  I would think with all the other things the godparents taught to her, and the way they treated her as an adult most of the time, that they would have pretty much trained her since birth to protect herself.  The love story was also a wee bit forced, but it could have been worse.  What I did like about this particular installment of the series is the almost minimizing of the Elemental Powers in certain characters.  The godparents were essentially artists who used their powers in small, domestic ways...almost as an after thought.  They are more focused on perfecting their art, no their powers and are therefore weaker then a practitioner who spends all their time practicing with their Elements.  I loved that this book showed that there were other less epic ways to wield the elements and still have a great life.  I liked the portrayal of both the vicar and Dr. Pike as men of gentleness, open mindedness and sensibleness.  Many times, especially in Victorian era books, the church men are portrayed as either lecherous power hungry dictators, or bumbling simple comic relief.  The vicar in this book was none of this AND helpful as well.  Dr. Pike along with the sanitarium he ran was also awesome as the evil torturous crazy house is a trope seen way to often in Victorian era books.  Learning about how a person could steal magic using the dark arts was interesting and the two different beliefs of mother and son when it came to the same rituals was cool as well. I did like that Marina could appreciate both the simple artists colony, but still want to have the modern pretty clothes and some part in society.  I think this shows how most people feel, enjoying more than one type of lifestyle and liking pretty things, or wanting to be a part of something different does not make you a bad person, or even lessen your love for another way of life.  Overall it was an ok book, it fits in with the series very well, but is not my favorite one.  I would recommend it to anybody who likes a fairy tale retelling, the Elemental Masters series, or certain tropes turned on their head.  I give this book 7 out of 10 carved cradles.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Maleficent

Hello all, how was your weekend?  I got a ton of reading done YIPEE, so be ready for a deluge of convoluted ramblings in the near future.  As much as I love reading, my sweet Hubbin was in need of a hot dog so of to the movies we went (the movies is the only place he eats hot dogs...).  Since I am spoiled my wonderful and amazing Hubbin took me to see Maleficent, which is supposed to be the back story to the evil faery in Disney's version of Sleeping Beauty.  I was both excited and dreading seeing this movie.  I was excited because Maleficent is by far my favorite Disney villain, followed by Ursula the Sea Witch, and Captain Hook (I am a fan of Disney films and I am not afraid to show it).  I have always loved the story of Sleeping Beauty, more for it's brutal villain's then for its passive princess and the Disney version of Maleficent was everything I wanted, she was strong, beautiful, powerful, even a bit sexy, and completely unapologetic for being as she puts it "the Mistress of Evil".  I was dreading this movie because in the new tradition of humanizing our villains I was afraid they would lose everything I loved about my Maleficent.
WARNING SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE AHEAD! 

Unfortunately I was right for the most part.  They took a powerful and strong female bad ass villain and made her a good guy who just had a bad moment or two.  Seriously I would say that you only get the feeling that Maleficent is any sort of villain for about five minutes of the entire movie.  Her history is not near as extensive as I would like to see, both beginning and ending with the would be King Stefan (Aurora/Sleeping Beauty's dad) and the reasoning behind a lot of what is done is flimsy at best.  She spends the first third of the movie as a good faery, the protector of her realm, which is actually pretty awesome visually.  She meets Stefan, a human whom with she falls in love with, but is heartbroken when he, you know does the whole human greed/ambition thing.  It is very obvious in this movie that humans are bad, destructive and greedy, while every thing else is magic and awesome and the petty humans must destroy it 'cause you know that's what humans do.  Stefan comes back to lull his old friend Maleficent to sleep to kill her so he can be king.

Of course his childhood feelings prevent murder so he just cuts off her wings instead.  He becomes king and she becomes pissed, with a penchant for black pleather.  One of the few cool things she does is create a servant out of a crow that is pretty awesome (I want a crow dude).  Using this crow dude she spies on the king until she learns he has a daughter.  Maleficent in a fit of revenge and pissed offness go swooping into the castle casting a completely watered down curse about sleeping until true loves kiss.  Yep she didn't even give the bumbling "good" faeries a chance to lessen the curse from death to sleep, she just did it herself.  The three colorful faeries take the kid into the woods (which I never understood...why not just take her away for the year between 15&16, how does raising her away from the castle protect her at all?!? Also that never actually happens in the original tales...but then those are not fit for children are they?) and make the most hilarious attempt to raise this squalling infant.  Seriously the best part of the movie is the three "good" faeries, their bumbling attempts to raise a human, and the funny, yet oddly harmless for the Mistress of Evil" tricks Maleficent plays on them.  Maleficent ends up completely enchanted by Aurora, and tries to remove the curse to no avail (note to self, don't cast unbreakable curses unless you really mean them) but offers to let Aurora live with her in the faery side of the giant thorn bush.  Aurora meets a boy, but there is no singing so I'm not sure if it was true love.  Aurora rides to the castle where she finally meets her father, only to find him a bitter, obsessive freak, bent on the destruction of Maleficent.  Aurora pricks her finger, Maleficent brings her the prince she met, but alas no true love there.  Maleficent is sad and kisses Aurora goodbye...which is of course true love and the princess awakens.  King Stefan is still hell bent on killing Maleficent, even after he see's his daughter alive and well, and of course conveniently forgetting the whole reason they are in this mess is 'cause he cut her wings off!!!!!!  Aurora finds the wings, Maleficent is healed, the crow turns into a really cool giant crow/dragon thing (I WANT ONE SO BAD), and the bad evil king is defeated and killed.  Aurora moves in with Maleficent and they all live happily ever after?!?

Yeah, so in case you didn't pick up on it, not my kind of movie.  It was visually stunning, but the gentling of one of the best villains out there just made me sad.  I like my villains to have a back story, very few beings (even fictional ones) are born evil, and knowing their journey usually adds a great dimension.  This however...I don't know...it seemed like they were trying to change history a bit, like in Star Wars when they change it so Greedo shoots first, Maleficent is supposed to be a glorious, bad ass villain, not a sweet earth mother with horns and a bad taste in pleather (though I totally want a giant pair of horns to go with my wings

 now).  The lack of any true badness in Maleficent made it very hard to associate her with the Mistress of Evil in the original movie...she didn't ever really take it out on her subjects.  In fact the only really bad thing she did was the watered down curse...which she tried to lift.  King Stefan on the other hand got a really bad take, in almost every story he at worst harmless and at best a loving and doting father.  I understand that it is popular to villainize the privileged white male, but this was just not the way to do it.  The reasons for his actions were again flimsy at best, and unexplained most of the time and made any reason for his hatred moot.  Over all I loved some of the visuals, want to watch a spin off with the three faeries, need a crow dude of my own,still love dragons, and want to completely rewrite this movie to give it its teeth back.  Instead I will go pick up one of my numerous, fantastic adaptions of the story and remember why I love the story in the first place.  Enchntment, Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep and Spindles End along with rewatching the original movie with all of the Mistress of Evil awesomeness (and maybe a quick rewatch of Enchanted with the fabulous Susan Sarandon showing the world how a villain should be done) will restore my faith in this twisted fairy tale.
What did you think of the movie?  Is it alright for villains to be bad, or are they better with a redeeming factor? What is your favorite villain?  Is it bad that at age 8 I was already preferring the Mistress of Evil to the princess?

100 Year Sleep

I am absolutely exhausted and there is no end in site for at least the next four weeks!  Sometimes when I feel like this I have the urge to prick my finger on a spindle and see if I can't get myself 100 years of sleep like our friend Sleeping Beauty.  I think that is the amount of sleep it would take at this point to feel finally rested, on the down side I bet I would have horrible morning breath :-)  Since 100 years of sleep is not on the schedule I will instead share some of my favorite versions of this tale in hopes that I can get some sleep vicariously.

Spindles End

A whole new twist on the Sleeping Beauty tale.  All the characters are fleshed out and we get to live the whole life of our heroine princess turned peasant.  The ending is a bit Huh? but over all one of my favorites (note to self, reread and ramble)

Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep

An extremely humorous take on this classic tale.  For being such a short little book, it packs a lot of punch, recommended for everybody!

Beauty Sleep

This is part of a series of hit or miss retelling's of all the classic fairy tales.  This Sleeping Beauty retelling is actually quit good.  The love story aspect of it is particularly well done, especially since 100 years really does pass.

Briar Rose

I have mixed feelings about this story, which is less a retelling and more of an allegory.  The biggest part was I wanted more of the fairy tale to be in the story, but that being said it is definitely worth reading and inspired further research on my part.

Enchantment

This may be one of my favorite retellings of all time.  The way the author combines history, magic, and great writing make this a classic for any lover of a good tale.  This is another book that had me running time and again to the computer to look up characters and tales mentioned, and yet it is still seamlessly blended into the  classic Sleeping Beauty tale.

Hopefully reading some of these books will help me feel like I've gotten sleep through osmosis.  I suppose I could try and get some extra sleep by putting my book down...hahahaha I crack myself up sometimes.

What is your favorite tale of sleep? Are you a morning or night person?  How bad would you have to pee if slept for 100 years?

Around The World In A Zillion Variations

One of my favorite things about fairy tales, mythical creatures, and fireside stories is the prevalence of them around the world.  I love to see the differences and the similarities between these old familiar tales and characters told in different places and through out time.  Some characters, creatures and stories are specific to a place or time, but most have a similar counterpart in most places.  To further my research on my favorite at the moment I acquired a book by Heidi Anne Heiner who also runs the SurLaLune site.  This book in particular is about the mermaid tales from around the world.

Mermaid

This is a nifty not so little book that is an incredible resource for people who want to delve into the stories of these fabled creatures.  This book contains observations, history, analysis and most importantly stories from around the world and through out time.  

Sleeping Beauty

There are several of these books, each focusing on a different story, it's origins and variations.  These are not sit down and read like a regular book type of books (does that make sense?).  They are more of a pick it up and find out interesting tidbits here and there. They also make for great resources if you are trying to write a new story, or just want to find out more about the originals (there is always more than one).

Cinderella

Unfortunately the hard copy editions of these books are pretty pricey which sucks 'cause I would like to see all of them lined up on my book shelf looking all pretty. However here is where e-readers are awesome because I can get all of these (there are like 15 of them so far) for closer to 10 bucks a pop instead of the 30-40 bucks the hard copies were costing (and that was for paperbacks!).  Like I said before, these are long, non linear, research type of books.  The content is wonderful and the illustrations awesome!  So anybody who wants to know more about there favorite fairy tale would enjoy the thoroughness of these books.  Anybody want to loan me a couple hundred bucks to buy the set?

War and Roses

Between my love of retold fairy tales and my weird interest in World War II, I decided to to pick up Briar Rose by Jane Yolen.  The book is about Rebecca, a young woman who has been fascinated by her grandmothers telling of Sleeping Beauty.

Her grandmother (who goes by Gemma) does not tell the traditional tale, it is a darker, scarier tale with odd little details. As they grow older Rebecca's sisters outgrow the story but Rebecca always remains at least a little enchanted with it.  After Gemma dies, one of her wishes is for the family to find out about her history, turns out not a lot is known about Gemma after she arrived as a refugee from Europe during World War II, the only clues are in a box of mementos left for the girls.  Becca decides to take on the challenge and follow the clues back to Europe.  SPOILER AHEAD, Becca finds an old friend of her grandmothers who agrees to tell her what he knows of Gemma's story.   Josef Potocki, a gay man who lived in a time and place where it was a deadly crime to be so.  He managed to stay safe until 1940 when his landlady turned him in and he 

was sent to a prison camp.  Even in the camp he was an outcast as being homosexual was not accepted by anyone during that era.  He eventually escapes and is taken in by a woodcutter and his partisan group, which was bent on defying Hilter.  Josef joins the group and helps them with their sometimes ill-conceived plans of doing everything in their power to disrupt Hitler's forces.  The group hears of a secret extermination camp called Chelmno and decide to try and do something about it.  As they stake out the camp they watch in horror as van after van full of dead bodies are brought and dumped into a pit.  After the soldiers have left the men go to the pit and find to their horror the prisoners are not just men, but women and children as well.  Somebody sees movement and realizes that a young woman is still alive.  They give her mouth to mouth and manage to revive her. Turns out that these had been people who were taken to the "castle" and told that they were going to be washed and disinfected and then given a work detail, instead they were stripped, crammed into vans and gassed to death on the way to the dumping pit.  The woman they had saved did not remember anything before being revived except for a dim memory of a fairytale, she said she was a princess in a castle and then the mist came and put her to sleep until she was kissed awake by a prince.  Eventually the rescued girl, who they all called Princess fell in love with one of her rescuers known as Avenger and they got married.  After the marriage the band was caught unawares by soldiers and all but Josef and the girl were killed.  The two got away and discovers that she is pregnant.  The girls new mission is to protect her unborn child and Josef helped her by providing forged documents to get her to America.  He never saw the girl again.  Becca returns home and writes up the story of her grandmother as the princess Brier Rose, happy to have learned what she could of her Gemma's past.

OK so that is the story.  I really wanted to love this book, it is very popular and is on many best of lists, but I just could not get into it.  While I understand what the author was trying to do, fitting it into the Sleeping Beauty fairy tell seemed forced.  Some of the details...I don't know felt like they had to be jury-rigged so that you could fit them into the fairy-tale format.  I was also looking forward to learning some of Gemma's history and other then the rescue from the death-pit (which I kind of figured out pretty quickly was gonna happen) we don't learn anything about her.  I guess I was disappointed because 2/3 of the book take a really long time to get us to the actual story and then the story was kind of disappointing.  Don't take my word for it, I have a really weird sense of how I like my stories to go and a lot of people like books I don't.  This is not that long of a read and the idea of what Ms. Yolen was trying to do with the character's making sense of their life through a fairy tale is a great one, I just felt it was a little forced.  A word of warning, there is some graphic violence, gore so don't let your little one read it without supervision.  I give it 3 out of 5 roses.

What did you think of this book?  Did the Sleeping Beauty story fit in here?  What fairy-tale is your life most like?

Sleeping Beauty: Historical Style

I don't remember how I found this book, I may have like the cover, I may have been intrigued by the back cover, it wasn't the author because I didn't know who he was yet, but regardless I've had this book for a really really long time.  The book is Enchantment by Orson Scott Card.  Yes the Orson Scott Card that wrote Enders Game, and the Alvin Maker series.  I have come to know and love Mr. Cards work, but this one will always be my favorite.

The book is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, which has always been one of my favorite fairytales.  The story is told with a historical spin on it.  A young man Ivan finds a mysterious spot while running in the forest deep in the Carpathian mountains.  In this spot is a "lake" of leaves in the middle of which is a stone pillar with a young woman sleeping.  Around this pillar is a moat like trench filled with leaves and guarded by a huge talking bear.  Ivan outwits the bear and leaps to the pillar and realizes how much like the story of Sleeping Beauty it seems to be. 

He kisses her, which of course wakes her up. This all happens pretty early in the story and then it gets really good!  "Sleeping Beauty" turns out to be a princess of a borderline primitive country that no longer exists, and by kissing her awake Ivan is now her betrothed.  The princess, Katrina, was placed under the spell by the evil witch Baba Yaga in a bid to take over her kingdom. Way too much happens to do it justice in a post that is under 100 pages and the pair end up going back to modern times to Ivan's parents. Ivan discovers that the time spent in Katerina's era matches up with several of the "original" myths and tales leading him to realize that the stories all started

with at least a kernel of truth.   Baba Yaga follows them back to modern America and continues to try and keep Katrina from inheriting the throne.  Ivan and Katrina with the help of his parents and the people of her kingdom come together in an EPIC (what a wonderfully overused word) battle of good and evil, culminating with the defeat of Baba Yaga.  In the end Katrina and Ivan end up splitting there time between the two worlds, raising there children in both times and places.

This is a very quick and dirty synopsis of a very detailed engrossing book.  Mr. Card does his homework and puts in plenty of historical facts without ever wandering into boringville.  The back and forth between the two times give both the main characters a chance to shine and a chance to feel awkwardly out of place.  The story mixes magic and epic struggles, with the everyday mundaneness of living life contrasted with the viewpoint of a person who has never lived our mundane life (does that sentence make sense at all?).  Another thing I love about this book (I love it when books do this) is it made me want to go look up some of the old tales and stories, too really get into some research on the lesser known characters in mythic history it's kind of a way to keep the story going.  I have read this book multiple times and recommended it to several people, all of whom (who?) have loved it.  I give this book 10 out of 10 sparkling tiaras.

What do you think of known authors branching out into something different?  Do you like it when a story mixes several old tales together, or do you prefer yours a little more pure?  Do I know how to write a long meandering post or what?