| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: None Violence level: Medium-Low Back Cover: “For rough-and-tumble Saturday, it's no fun being the only one in the family without any magical talent. Too tall, too strong, too normal, that's her lot in life—until the day she accidentally creates an ocean in the backyard. Suddenly things are looking up. With her sword in tow, Saturday sets sail on the sudden sea, only to find herself kidnapped and whisked off to the mountain at the top of the world. Held captive by a blind witch who gives her a series of impossible tasks, Saturday is aided by a very appealing young man who knows all the witch's tricks. But he turns out to be under a spell that only Saturday can break—and that will only happen when this seemingly normal girl digs deep enough to find her own hidden talents.” |
I'm also slightly annoyed by the “second book” syndrome again. It does have a complete story with the escape from the witch and the dragon and all, but there's a lot of narrative time spent on a completely different story that never gets anywhere close to resolved, and it has a huge cliffhanger. I guess it's kind of nice to know there will be more, since I've really enjoyed the first two, but it doesn't keep me from feeling frustrated with it.
So the first one was a mashup of every fairytale ever told. As far as I know, Saturday's story doesn't contain any fairytales (although there are plenty of fairytale-like elements). I could be wrong about that, of course. It might just be fairytales that I'm not very familiar with. Regardless, I very much enjoyed the impossible tasks. The first one at least was nice and clever, and it's a good thing Saturday had a clever boy there to help her figure it out. She's wonderfully stubborn, but doesn't have much practice in circular thinking. It does make Peregrine seem unusually dense at the end, though. (And I can't say why for fear of spoilers.) I guess he had more practice dealing with the witch than with the real world, so it sort of makes sense.
Altogether, I'd say this is a worthy successor to Enchanted. I loved Saturday's character especially, and she was written very differently from Sunday, which shows some good writing skills. I also enjoyed Peregrine's very zen attitude toward his captivity. And the relationship between the two is downright funny as it progresses (unlike the relationship between Sunday and Rumbold, which was very nearly tragic). So it's different from the first novel rather than being more of the same, and I appreciate that.