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toggle_fow 's review for:
The Princess and Curdie
by George MacDonald
Was this as good as The Princess and the Goblin? No way.
Was it still good? Yes.
The same fairy-tale weirdness is here, along with the same kind of fairy-tale logic; everything makes absolutely no sense while simultaneously seeming perfectly natural, inevitable, and obvious. Curdie is still great, and so is the little princess. A lot less time is spent with the grandmother, and a lot less time is spent on the kind of delicate, mysterious discovery of self and others that made the previous book so captivating. Instead, Curdie is given a straightforward mission, which he straightforwardly carries out. This does kind of make this book Less than the first book.
The one other thing that majorly throws this book for an unfortunate loop is the ending. First of all... there are only three good people in the land besides Curdie and the princess? Why? How? This is strange and unsettling, but can be passed over because the book is only supposed to make a certain small amount of overt sense anyway. The thing that can't really be passed over is the epilogue, wherein Curdie and the princess get married and then die childless decades later, and the land descends again into inevitable antediluvian style evil and destroys itself.
I don't really need to point out that this is highly disturbing. And, like, what does this MEAN? MacDonald fairy tales are full of messages about humanity and morality, so is this a message of some kind? Is the moral of the story that human depravity is insurmountable? That doesn't seem right, and yet I can't imagine any other possible interpretation? What on Earth is going on here, honestly. I am left distressed and unsatisfied.
Was it still good? Yes.
The same fairy-tale weirdness is here, along with the same kind of fairy-tale logic; everything makes absolutely no sense while simultaneously seeming perfectly natural, inevitable, and obvious. Curdie is still great, and so is the little princess. A lot less time is spent with the grandmother, and a lot less time is spent on the kind of delicate, mysterious discovery of self and others that made the previous book so captivating. Instead, Curdie is given a straightforward mission, which he straightforwardly carries out. This does kind of make this book Less than the first book.
The one other thing that majorly throws this book for an unfortunate loop is the ending. First of all... there are only three good people in the land besides Curdie and the princess? Why? How? This is strange and unsettling, but can be passed over because the book is only supposed to make a certain small amount of overt sense anyway. The thing that can't really be passed over is the epilogue, wherein Curdie and the princess get married and then die childless decades later, and the land descends again into inevitable antediluvian style evil and destroys itself.
I don't really need to point out that this is highly disturbing. And, like, what does this MEAN? MacDonald fairy tales are full of messages about humanity and morality, so is this a message of some kind? Is the moral of the story that human depravity is insurmountable? That doesn't seem right, and yet I can't imagine any other possible interpretation? What on Earth is going on here, honestly. I am left distressed and unsatisfied.