Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Loose retelling of Sleeping Beauty, with all kinds of charming magical twists. Loved it. Read hoping for something more like Sunshine, but enjoyed this very much. Read more McKinley!
I love everything by Robin McKinley. This book was no exception. Really good retelling of a fairy tale.
Robin McKinley is a goddess, first of all. Her books can do no wrong for me – I just adore her fairy tale retellings. Beauty is one of my favorite books.
First of all, the writing is simply beautiful: “People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.” JUST. GAH. And the entire book is written in this narrative vein. Which I loved – it kept with the fairy tale feel by dispensing with the dialogue. Not just that, but McKinley managed to retell Sleeping Beauty in a way that was actually different enough to be unique, but familiar enough to clearly be Sleeping Beauty. So A+, McKinley, A+.
Second, as other reviewers have said, it was totally twee. It was kind of refreshingly different. And from a feminist angle, Peony seems as if she’d be the perfect princess, meanwhile the real princess, Rosie, is a mess. She hates anything feminine, and frankly, she is a badass who has "beast speech." The only thing that creeped me out was Rosie’s love interest, who I felt was a bit too old…but hey, it’s a fairy tale. Shit happens.
Cross-posted to http://off-the-book.org
http://www.off-the-book.org/2014/05/face-in-book-update-mini-review-edition.html
First of all, the writing is simply beautiful: “People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.” JUST. GAH. And the entire book is written in this narrative vein. Which I loved – it kept with the fairy tale feel by dispensing with the dialogue. Not just that, but McKinley managed to retell Sleeping Beauty in a way that was actually different enough to be unique, but familiar enough to clearly be Sleeping Beauty. So A+, McKinley, A+.
Second, as other reviewers have said, it was totally twee. It was kind of refreshingly different. And from a feminist angle, Peony seems as if she’d be the perfect princess, meanwhile the real princess, Rosie, is a mess. She hates anything feminine, and frankly, she is a badass who has "beast speech." The only thing that creeped me out was Rosie’s love interest, who I felt was a bit too old…but hey, it’s a fairy tale. Shit happens.
Cross-posted to http://off-the-book.org
http://www.off-the-book.org/2014/05/face-in-book-update-mini-review-edition.html
A total delight to reread, especially since it had been so long I’d forgotten everything about the plot (except that it was a Sleeping Beauty retelling). A few things felt familiar, but that was all. A perfect secret Santa gift from Megan! The resolution felt a little more plodding than the rest of the story - I was really in it for the characters and world-building as less for the showdown with the big baddie - but that was the only negative.
Reread as a comfort book. This is such a strange one -- I love it but also think it would be difficult to publish these days. The world building is so dense, and the climax is difficult to follow, with a lot of magical solutions that aren't really rooted in what we know of the magical rules, so they feel a little too convenient. Having said that, I still love it, and still find myself sucked in every time I read it.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Strong character development:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Interesting retelling. Some parts were super exciting/engaging and at other points I was just lost.
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I know I read this book as a kid, but in listening to it, I remembered barely any of it. It was fun to rediscover the world McKinley had created out of the tale of Sleeping Beauty, and the characters made me want to keep reading(/listening).
I love the first half of this and am charmed by the world it builds. The second half is a little slower than I would have preferred.
I'm a sucker for books that retell old stories, and this is one of the best examples of it. A wonderfully organized version of Sleeping Beauty, there's enough adventure and drama to make this a Must-Read in my book. This is one of the first books I throw at people that are new to Fantasy.