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A review by coolcurrybooks
The Ninety-Ninth Bride by Catherine F. King
4.0
Imagine a retelling of the frame story of One Thousand and One Nights, where Scheherazade tells stories each night to avoid death. I’ve seen retellings of this tale before, but Catherine Faris King may have written my favorite. The Ninety-Ninth Bride is a young adult fantasy novel that reads like a cross between The City of Brass and the work of Diana Wynne Jones: in other words, it’s a tremendous delight!
When Dunya is fifteen, the Sultan goes mad, killing his bride and then marrying and killing other women, one after another each night. After ninety-eight women have been executed, Dunya is given to the Sultan by her father, the Grand Vizier, to become his ninety-ninth bride. With Dunya’s death looming, salvation arrives from an unexpected source: a mysterious woman named Zahra.
I ended up spending a lazy Saturday morning reading The Ninety-Ninth Bride in one leisurely sitting. It’s not that the story’s particularly fast-paced or full of action, but it is compelling. There are mysteries, of course, (who is Zahra? Or what…), but the most compelling aspect is Dunya’s own personal growth. She’s spent most of her life alone and isolated with no idea of her own capabilities. While her life now hangs in balance every night, it’s also given her a degree of independence and power. She’s started to investigate the world around her and take initiative to solve the problems she sees.
The Ninety-Ninth Bride is centered around the female characters. Dunya is the heroine of the story, but she’s surrounded by other women too. In the days before her marriage to the Sultan, she became friends with two other women who were later married and murdered by the same Sultan. She also befriends a djinn, who’s broken-hearted after her girlfriend breaks up with her. And finally, there’s Zahra herself, who seems to have sorcerous powers — how else would she convince everyone that she’s the Sultan’s bride, not Dunya, and that she’s Dunya’s sister besides?
Romance in The Ninety-Ninth Bride is minimal. There’s a young man who Dunya has some romantic feelings for, but he’s not the focus of the story. That’s Dunya’s own character growth.
Retellings of One Thousand and One Nights always run into the problem of the Sultan. In the original story, he’s completely forgiven for killing all his previous wives and lives happily ever after with Scheherazade. Obviously, this is a problem for modern day YA retellings. Another one, A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston, deals with it by having the Sultan be possessed. The Ninety-Ninth Bride uses no such devices — the Sultan who kills his wives is not under any outside influences, so the questions remain: how many chances does one man get? Is he redeemable? I’m not going to go into spoiler territory, but I was very satisfied with the conclusion. Also, there’s a twist I didn’t predict at all!
The Ninety-Ninth Bride is one of the better YA fairy tale retellings I’ve encountered, and this may be my favorite retelling of One Thousand and One Nights. If you’re looking for a young adult novel with significant female characters and a heroine growing into her own agency, look no further than The Ninety-Ninth Bride.
Review from The Illustrated Page.
When Dunya is fifteen, the Sultan goes mad, killing his bride and then marrying and killing other women, one after another each night. After ninety-eight women have been executed, Dunya is given to the Sultan by her father, the Grand Vizier, to become his ninety-ninth bride. With Dunya’s death looming, salvation arrives from an unexpected source: a mysterious woman named Zahra.
I ended up spending a lazy Saturday morning reading The Ninety-Ninth Bride in one leisurely sitting. It’s not that the story’s particularly fast-paced or full of action, but it is compelling. There are mysteries, of course, (who is Zahra? Or what…), but the most compelling aspect is Dunya’s own personal growth. She’s spent most of her life alone and isolated with no idea of her own capabilities. While her life now hangs in balance every night, it’s also given her a degree of independence and power. She’s started to investigate the world around her and take initiative to solve the problems she sees.
The Ninety-Ninth Bride is centered around the female characters. Dunya is the heroine of the story, but she’s surrounded by other women too. In the days before her marriage to the Sultan, she became friends with two other women who were later married and murdered by the same Sultan. She also befriends a djinn, who’s broken-hearted after her girlfriend breaks up with her. And finally, there’s Zahra herself, who seems to have sorcerous powers — how else would she convince everyone that she’s the Sultan’s bride, not Dunya, and that she’s Dunya’s sister besides?
Romance in The Ninety-Ninth Bride is minimal. There’s a young man who Dunya has some romantic feelings for, but he’s not the focus of the story. That’s Dunya’s own character growth.
Retellings of One Thousand and One Nights always run into the problem of the Sultan. In the original story, he’s completely forgiven for killing all his previous wives and lives happily ever after with Scheherazade. Obviously, this is a problem for modern day YA retellings. Another one, A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston, deals with it by having the Sultan be possessed. The Ninety-Ninth Bride uses no such devices — the Sultan who kills his wives is not under any outside influences, so the questions remain: how many chances does one man get? Is he redeemable? I’m not going to go into spoiler territory, but I was very satisfied with the conclusion. Also, there’s a twist I didn’t predict at all!
The Ninety-Ninth Bride is one of the better YA fairy tale retellings I’ve encountered, and this may be my favorite retelling of One Thousand and One Nights. If you’re looking for a young adult novel with significant female characters and a heroine growing into her own agency, look no further than The Ninety-Ninth Bride.
Review from The Illustrated Page.