| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: None (but lots of kissing, of course) Violence level: Medium Back Cover: “Rapunzel is not your average teenager. For one thing, she has a serious illness that keeps her inside the mysterious Gothel Mansion. And for another, her hair is 15 feet long. Not to mention that she's also the key to ultimately saving the world from certain destruction. But then she meets a boy named Fane through Facebook, who changes all she has ever known, and she decides to risk everything familiar to find out who she really is.” |
If you look at it right, this book encourages disobedience to parents, reckless endangerment of self and friends, and sneaking out in the middle of the night. From another perspective, you could say it encourages curiosity about the world around you, questioning what you're told so you can know for yourself if it's true, and living your dreams. I guess it's just a matter of how you look at it.
I mean, the story is dark. The story has always been dark, but setting it in modern day and removing almost all the magic just makes it all that much more obvious how dark it is. Kidnapping, insanity, torture, and murder—along with the more satanic aspects of witchcraft—are all integral to the plot, and you can almost forget that it's in any way a fantasy (except for the 15 feet of hair) until the end when the real magic comes into play. Actually, I almost wish they could have done it without the magic at all, although then I wouldn't have been able to review it here, since this is only for science fiction and fantasy books.
Now, the one thing that I most thoroughly liked about this book (and what makes it appropriate to post this week) is the Thanksgiving that Rapunzel spends with Fane. I have to say she got really lucky in her Facebook experience, managing to not only avoid the creepy stalker problem, but also meet the perfect man on her first try. If only internet dating worked that well for me. So she manages to sneak out and spend Thanksgiving day with Fane and his family, and I just love that family. They're boistrous and cheerful and so entirely unlike anything Rapunzel has ever experienced. Actually they remind me of some of my family gatherings. Probably very normal, which just highlights how far from normal her life has been so far.
However, it does just emphasize my earlier rant. I mean, she got out already, more than once, actually. She's obviously not exactly stuck in her tower. So once she figures out that she's been kidnapped, if she'd just kept up the act for a few hours more, she could have gotten out again, gone to Fane for help and a place to stay, and called the police, for goodness sake! And all she had to do was cut her magic hair and the bad guys would have no reason to pursue her. And then no one would have been starved, tazed, shot, stabbed, or killed. Which I suppose wouldn't have been such a good story.