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A review by magentabyfive
Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia C. Wrede
2.0
Not all that interesting. It's not that it was a bad book, but wasn't very gripping to me. The romance was so lackluster that it hardly seemed worth noting. The girl's never seemed to develop much of a personality beyond what they had in the fairy tale. Maybe they weren't developed enough for me because, while the book was relatively short, there was a lot of time around other characters, including the random girl John didn't pay attention to getting obsessed over him and then trying to start rumors.
I enjoyed the brother's story, especially near the beginning. I think if the story had followed them almost exclusively and not spent time going through the motions of the fairy tale with the sisters, but still being about the fairy tale, that would have been fine. John, though he is the typical prince, and Hugh at least had enough personality that I liked them. The sister's I didn't feel like I gleamed enough about them to care, like Sleeping Beauty in Disney's version where what little I learned about her irritated me, and the story was more about the fairies. Here, as I said, it's too stretched for characters to develop any in any interesting way.
The inclusion of the fairy tale was both a blessing and a curse. I enjoyed the story for what it was, but it was a bit like the dialogue, more distracting me from the story than engaging me in it. I don't know, the dialogue just did not work for me. I think because it felt removed from the rest of the text in some ways. The problem comes when it is clear the author is not from the era, I find that dialogue from this isn't bringing me back to that time, but more used as a gimmick in the book. It didn't help define the characters, it just made it harder to get lost in the world she had created.
Which wasn't to say it was awful, as I said, especially near the beginning I enjoyed whenever John was the one we were following around, and I did enjoy the original fairy tale being there for me to read, even if it did distract, in many ways, from the story Patricia Wrede was writing ironically.
I enjoyed the brother's story, especially near the beginning. I think if the story had followed them almost exclusively and not spent time going through the motions of the fairy tale with the sisters, but still being about the fairy tale, that would have been fine. John, though he is the typical prince, and Hugh at least had enough personality that I liked them. The sister's I didn't feel like I gleamed enough about them to care, like Sleeping Beauty in Disney's version where what little I learned about her irritated me, and the story was more about the fairies. Here, as I said, it's too stretched for characters to develop any in any interesting way.
The inclusion of the fairy tale was both a blessing and a curse. I enjoyed the story for what it was, but it was a bit like the dialogue, more distracting me from the story than engaging me in it. I don't know, the dialogue just did not work for me. I think because it felt removed from the rest of the text in some ways. The problem comes when it is clear the author is not from the era, I find that dialogue from this isn't bringing me back to that time, but more used as a gimmick in the book. It didn't help define the characters, it just made it harder to get lost in the world she had created.
Which wasn't to say it was awful, as I said, especially near the beginning I enjoyed whenever John was the one we were following around, and I did enjoy the original fairy tale being there for me to read, even if it did distract, in many ways, from the story Patricia Wrede was writing ironically.