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A review by merieshenanigans
The Wild Swans by K.M. Shea
5.0
"The one thing this wretched trial has taught me is that love covers a multitude of sins."
I thought I'd matured since I last read this book, but here I am now upping my rating to a full five stars...
Yes, I know this book is problematic. I know it's one of K.M. Shea's first retellings, and that it's one of the (if not the) least popular of her books because of the way things were resolved. After skimming through some reviews, I wanted to reread the book (it was a while since I had last done so) and see if my original love for it still stands.
To be honest, if it's even possible, I think I love it even more now, despite knowing the full extent of all its issues.
If Kitty had written this book later on in her writing career, I'm not sure she would have resolved the love triangle the way she did--it displeased most readers, and it made for a lot of trouble for later books in spite of its standalone nature. However, knowing Kitty, I'm pretty sure this won't actually be a problem in the future.
But anyway, the love triangle isn't why I love this book. Like anyone who's read it, it's definitely my least favorite part of it. And perhaps it detracted quite a bit from some of the story, but just how much do you have to care about romance in a novel that technically isn't part of the romance genre to hate the entire thing because of it? I mean we all like our books as perfect as can be, but if you ask me there will always be something to complain about, won't there...?
You can say that the ending ruined the book because of the love triangle, but the book itself is a retelling of "The Wild Swans," a fairytale that no matter how you look at it simply can't be interpreted as a particularly romantic story.
(Not saying none of it is romantic--in fact I think the ending is very sweet--but it doesn't really have any romance. At all.)
In this way, I stand firm in my convictiom that this novel, as a fairly faithful retelling of the original (as all Shea's reimaginings are), is still truly a story about family. If you can ignore the annoying love triangle in the background, it's quite hard to not see the message of love and sacrifice the author is so clearly portraying with this fairytale. A lot of people keep going on about how neither of the love interests deserve the heroine--yeah, I can get behind that; Rune and Falk did some pretty cruel things to other people in the name of loving her, and they aren't mentioned to show any remorse later on--but for goodness's sake, that's the point of the whole darn story. The author literally spent the past 200+ pages showing how love isn't given because you deserve it, and great sacrifices aren't made for the worthy. That's the moral of the fairytale. And that's also something every fairytale retelling does: retell the moral of the story. Else writing them would be pretty meaningless.
Sure, this message technically applies to the actual story, the part about her brothers--which only solidifies my point that the story isn't about the romance. Since the ending isn't resolute, shouldn't that be more than enough proof that it doesn't really... matter? It's not good story craft right there, that's for sure; then all the more reason to acknowledge it and enjoy what good the story does have to offer. And if I'm not mistaken the story does have a lot to offer.
On the more technical side, I'm sure people might be turned off by some grammatical and editing oversights in the book--but if you're reading this review, you should already be used to that kind of thing anyway.
I thought I'd matured since I last read this book, but here I am now upping my rating to a full five stars...
Yes, I know this book is problematic. I know it's one of K.M. Shea's first retellings, and that it's one of the (if not the) least popular of her books because of the way things were resolved. After skimming through some reviews, I wanted to reread the book (it was a while since I had last done so) and see if my original love for it still stands.
To be honest, if it's even possible, I think I love it even more now, despite knowing the full extent of all its issues.
If Kitty had written this book later on in her writing career, I'm not sure she would have resolved the love triangle the way she did--it displeased most readers, and it made for a lot of trouble for later books in spite of its standalone nature. However, knowing Kitty, I'm pretty sure this won't actually be a problem in the future.
But anyway, the love triangle isn't why I love this book. Like anyone who's read it, it's definitely my least favorite part of it. And perhaps it detracted quite a bit from some of the story, but just how much do you have to care about romance in a novel that technically isn't part of the romance genre to hate the entire thing because of it? I mean we all like our books as perfect as can be, but if you ask me there will always be something to complain about, won't there...?
You can say that the ending ruined the book because of the love triangle, but the book itself is a retelling of "The Wild Swans," a fairytale that no matter how you look at it simply can't be interpreted as a particularly romantic story.
(Not saying none of it is romantic--in fact I think the ending is very sweet--but it doesn't really have any romance. At all.)
In this way, I stand firm in my convictiom that this novel, as a fairly faithful retelling of the original (as all Shea's reimaginings are), is still truly a story about family. If you can ignore the annoying love triangle in the background, it's quite hard to not see the message of love and sacrifice the author is so clearly portraying with this fairytale. A lot of people keep going on about how neither of the love interests deserve the heroine--yeah, I can get behind that; Rune and Falk did some pretty cruel things to other people in the name of loving her, and they aren't mentioned to show any remorse later on--but for goodness's sake, that's the point of the whole darn story. The author literally spent the past 200+ pages showing how love isn't given because you deserve it, and great sacrifices aren't made for the worthy. That's the moral of the fairytale. And that's also something every fairytale retelling does: retell the moral of the story. Else writing them would be pretty meaningless.
Sure, this message technically applies to the actual story, the part about her brothers--which only solidifies my point that the story isn't about the romance. Since the ending isn't resolute, shouldn't that be more than enough proof that it doesn't really... matter? It's not good story craft right there, that's for sure; then all the more reason to acknowledge it and enjoy what good the story does have to offer. And if I'm not mistaken the story does have a lot to offer.
On the more technical side, I'm sure people might be turned off by some grammatical and editing oversights in the book--but if you're reading this review, you should already be used to that kind of thing anyway.