| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: Low Violence level: Medium-Low Back Cover: “Princess Petunia has been kidnapped! Except...it was really more like an accident. Oliver, the leader of a band of thieves known as the Wolves of the Westfalian Woods, didn't mean to do it. And now he must make things right. He will confess to the king and deliver the princess to the grand duchess's estate. But Petunia's safety is far from secured. As children, she and her eleven sisters had been cursed to dance endlessly at the midnight ball of the fearsome King Under Stone. Troubling dreams of the ball are once again haunting Petunia, and she can't be sure they are mere nightmares. When she and her sisters fall into a carefully laid trap, who but a handsome woodsman can save the day?” |
And I still have the same problem with the stubborn, idiot obtuseness of the king. I know they have to have some kind of roadblock to make the story interesting, but you'd think he might have learned how much it pays to listen when people come to him with an odd story. But no. When he's out of his depth, he just grabs hold of anything he does understand and clings to it for dear life. That can be like trying desperately to find solid ground when you're floating in deep water. The quickest way may be down, but it certainly isn't the best.
But mostly, I think the problem was that it's trying to hard to be a fairy tale that it just isn't. There are elements of Little Red Riding Hood here, of course, along with the nice role reversal that I liked so much with Princess of Glass. But the real story is the conclusion for the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and the new fairytale has to fit itself around that, so it seems a little tacked on. Also, with so many couples now formed up and having little storylets of their own, the books seems more crowded than ever. All the different stories weave in and out of each other very well, actually, but what should be the central story of Petunia and Oliver manages to get a little bit lost amid everything else.
All of this isn't to say that the book isn't good. Just that I enjoyed the other two more.