| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: None Violence level: Medium-Low (more threatened than acted upon, really) Back Cover: "It starts when Alexandria, an orphaned goose girl, offers some of her precious bread and water to a hungry old woman. The woman just happens to be a witch in disguise, and poof! Alexandria is suddenly heartstoppingly beautiful. When she brushes her hair, gold dust showers to the ground, and her tears turn to diamonds. Now that she's so beautiful and wealthy, King Claudio the Cruel and Prince Edmund of Dorloo are fighting for her hand, and have locked her in a tower to keep her “safe.” How Alexandria wishes she were a poor, plain goose girl again! Clearly she has to escape—and, with the aid of her twelve geese, that's precisely what she does. Which is when her problems really begin...” |
On the other hand, it's actually a pretty clever retelling. My favorite part is the business with the magic hair, partly because it's nice and inventive, and partly because it's just so amusing to imagine someone singing the praises of their own hair in the hopes of getting it to cooperate. It's just a good thing the goose girl's hair isn't a very good judge of character, or it would have realized she was lying to it the whole time. The moral of that story? Flattering inanimate objects will get you further than cursing at them.
I suppose I may have been a bit dense, but I wasn't expecting the love story. The prince seems like such an idiot to start out with, and he only improves slightly with time. Not that Alexandria is exceptionally clever or anything. I guess once she got to know him and realized his motives—the geo-political ones as well as the personal ones—that might have been sufficient reason to love him. He sort of grows on you. And it's the kind of story that just has to end with a happily ever after involving two people falling in love. That's what you get with stories that use the word 'twas. They just can't help themselves.
All the same, I would have loved to see her actually outsmart both suitors and make her own life.