It's been some time since I've gotten to enjoy a good fairy tale retelling. Now, most people jump at the chance to retell stories like Red Riding Hood and Snow White, but one of the stories that's often neglected is Sleeping Beauty. I imagine this is because, of all the Grimm fairy tales, this one is the one that most people use as an example of cliche stories where nothing happens and out-of-nowhere love saves the day. To take this story and make it exciting is definitely a challenge. How did this one pan out? Let's see.
Isabelle and Aurora are as close as half-sisters can be. Isabelle, the king's illegitimate older daughter, is wild and stubborn and blind. Aurora, the younger heiress to the throne, is sweet-tempered and kind and can neither feel or speak. When it comes time for Aurora to be married to a foreign prince, the kingdom decides to send Isabelle off to a convent. Isabelle instead runs away with her best friend, Gilbert, but Aurora pursues and accidentally stumbles upon a golden spinning wheel that plunges her into a deep sleep. A sleeping curse soon spreads over the kingdom and Aurora must navigate through a world of dreams built by the mysterious Night Faerie and Isabelle must travel across the sea to find Aurora's betrothed and get him to lift her sister's curse.
This has a lot of really good ideas...and other ideas that kind of ruin the good ones. For instance, making both these princess's handicapped via a faerie's curse can make for some pretty good storytelling. However, Isabelle's blindness is so rarely an obstacle that we kind of forget that it's there. She's able to doing things that kind of defy logic and reasoning. A blind person traveling completely unknown territory, can climb a building she's never been to before, sneaks into exactly the right window and finds who she's looking for in a matter of seconds. Either she's the luckiest person in the world or I call bull. Also, making Aurora unable to speak is a great concept...except when she falls asleep her handicaps are gone and she can talk and feel for the rest of the book. Hm, feels like a wasted opportunity.
For a story based on a pretty simple (some might say even too simple) fairy tale, this thing is incredibly complex. It follows the point of views of multiple characters and no two chapters are with the same person. There are even some chapters from the point of view of characters we barely know, just kind of show up for their two seconds of fame, then disappear and never come back. They contribute almost nothing and left me a bit perplexed, I've got to admit, as to why the author saw fit to include them at all. Also, the world building was fairly well done, but something just kept bugging me. This is clearly it's own world, with its own set up so...why do they keep talking about Greek and Roman history/mythology? They keep comparing this one faerie's home to a Roman bath house, they bring up the legend of Icarus and mention other things pertaining to the culture but...how can they know these things if Greece and Rome don't exist in this universe, as far as I can tell. And if they do exist, does this mean this takes place in our world? Do they have their own versions of Greece and Rome that just so happen to be called the same things and have the same culture and legends? They mythos of this world fluxes between real world and made-up world when it really should have stuck to one or the other.
Now, I'm making this book sound worse than it actually is. There is some good stuff in here, honestly. While the princesses have a little too much luck and their handicaps really don't serve as handicaps, there is a lot more to them. Isabelle has to deal with her feelings of inferiority and, throughout the book, tries to come to terms with her own self worth. Aurora has been unbelievably sheltered her whole life and never knowing pain in any way or form. So, when she's thrown into a world vastly different from what she's always known and her ability to feel is returned, she too learns what it is to make sacrifices and fight for something she wants, instead of waiting for someone to do it for her. These little tidbits of character development are really good and shows how these two girls, despite being so very different, actually have a lot in common.
Unfortunately, while it's not the longest book I've ever read or the hardest, this one felt like it took a good long while to get through. Towards the end of the book, things start getting pretty complicated and there's a "twist" that anyone who's read a book ever will see coming in regards to the prince finally finding Aurora. The motivations of our villains, the Faerie Queen and the Night Faerie, get even more confusing instead of getting clearer. It's just a huge build up of sequel bait that didn't actually lead up to anything and didn't really get me hyped like it wanted to.
Final Verdict
It was a bold move to try and make Sleeping Beauty into a complex story, and while the author succeeded, I think she did her job too well. Still, there was a lot of effort in this thing as well as good character development, but jumbled up characters, inconsistent world building, and confusing motivations lead me to say that it is worth checking out...but wait for it on paperback.
Have you read the book? What did you think? Comment below and share your thoughts. Please make sure to Follow Midnight Readings for instant updates. Have a book you'd like me to read or would like to make a recommendation? Contact me on goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/65448711-michelle-beer
Next time: It's tough being a dark grisha...I mean Geisha...I mean asha!
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