You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
hazelalaska 's review for:
The Door in the Hedge
by Robin McKinley
I decided to up my rating on this from my average rating of the 4 stories because I did enjoy them and I really like fairy tales.
This collection consisted of two original fairy tales and two retellings of popular fairy tales.
The Stolen Princess: 2.75 stars
The Princess and the Frog: 2.5 stars
The Hunting of the Hind: 2 stars
The Twelve Dancing Princesses: 3 stars
Average rating: 2.5 stars
Favorite to Least Favorite
The Stolen Princess
The Frog Princess
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
The Hunting of the Hind
I did like the premises of the stories, but the execution was often lacking. Especially in the first story, the author used really flowery language that detracted from the story and made me extremely confused. This was a trend throughout the stories, and one that I could have done without. Even though they are fairy tales, I think that they could have been fleshed out more, especially with the characters because they fell in love in a short period of time or got married and there was little connection between them, especially in the first story. If the language was simplified and the characters fleshed out more, they would be a lot better. I was disappointed that I didn’t like them more, but they were too often confusing and I didn’t know what was really happening.
I found the prologues in the first and last stories to be unnecessary. Fairy tales, and works as short as these, do not need prologues, and they were sort of boring and made me not want to read the story. The information from the prologue should have just been woven into the story, and really the same thing goes for the epilogues.
One thing that I was not a fan of was the stories still reinforcing gender roles and the idea of women as property, especially in the retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses.
It was sort of a mixed bag because I liked one of the original stories and one of the retellings, which had a different twist on it from other retellings that I have read, but I disliked the other retelling because there was not really anything that different from other versions. In fact, I realized that I think I had heard that sort of spin on The Twelve Dancing Princesses from The book Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George, so if you like this I would recommend trying that one. And I pretty much absolutely hated the other original story, The Hunting of the Hind, because it was confusing a lot of the time.
I was hoping to really love these stories and while I didn’t, I do think I would read them again because I did like them, just not as much as I was expecting, and I still have some mixed feelings about this book.
This collection consisted of two original fairy tales and two retellings of popular fairy tales.
The Stolen Princess: 2.75 stars
The Princess and the Frog: 2.5 stars
The Hunting of the Hind: 2 stars
The Twelve Dancing Princesses: 3 stars
Average rating: 2.5 stars
Favorite to Least Favorite
The Stolen Princess
The Frog Princess
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
The Hunting of the Hind
I did like the premises of the stories, but the execution was often lacking. Especially in the first story, the author used really flowery language that detracted from the story and made me extremely confused. This was a trend throughout the stories, and one that I could have done without. Even though they are fairy tales, I think that they could have been fleshed out more, especially with the characters because they fell in love in a short period of time or got married and there was little connection between them, especially in the first story. If the language was simplified and the characters fleshed out more, they would be a lot better. I was disappointed that I didn’t like them more, but they were too often confusing and I didn’t know what was really happening.
I found the prologues in the first and last stories to be unnecessary. Fairy tales, and works as short as these, do not need prologues, and they were sort of boring and made me not want to read the story. The information from the prologue should have just been woven into the story, and really the same thing goes for the epilogues.
One thing that I was not a fan of was the stories still reinforcing gender roles and the idea of women as property, especially in the retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses.
It was sort of a mixed bag because I liked one of the original stories and one of the retellings, which had a different twist on it from other retellings that I have read, but I disliked the other retelling because there was not really anything that different from other versions. In fact, I realized that I think I had heard that sort of spin on The Twelve Dancing Princesses from The book Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George, so if you like this I would recommend trying that one. And I pretty much absolutely hated the other original story, The Hunting of the Hind, because it was confusing a lot of the time.
I was hoping to really love these stories and while I didn’t, I do think I would read them again because I did like them, just not as much as I was expecting, and I still have some mixed feelings about this book.