| $@%&! level: Low (if any) “Bedroom” level: Low (there's some suggestive behavior, and one attempt at intimacy, which is very quickly and forcefully rejected.) Violence level: Low Back Cover: “Five adventurous sisters... Four dark creatures... Three magical gifts... Two forbidden lovers... One enchanted frog... Cross the threshold into the Wildwood, and enter a land of magic, daring, betrayal...and true love.” |
The basic story is the Twelve Dancing Princesses, except this time there are only five of them, and they aren't princesses, just daughters of a wealthy merchant. Reducing the number of girls to five makes them much easier to keep track of, and allows them each to have a more solidly defined character. There's also the change that this time the girls aren't forced to dance. They actually enjoy it, and would be very sad if they weren't allowed to visit their magical dancing glade every month. And for once it isn't the oldest who is the main character, but the second born, Jena. She's the practical one, and thinks of herself as relatively plain (the relative to whom she compares herself being her older sister, Tatiana.) And I suppose in comparison, she must be both plain and practical, given that she is never described in poetry and she doesn't come close to dying of love. If I had to name a second most annoying character, it'd be Tatiana. I'm sad to say that, because I kind of like her, but she does tend to make me rant a bit. I suspect she would make Jena rant a bit as well, if Jena wasn't so busy with taking care of everything, including her sisters. Maybe it's the fate of the practical sister to take care of things and never quite plummet to the utter depths of romance. Not that Jena doesn't have her own excellent love story, but it is slightly more reasonable all around.
Speaking of which, the second fairytale embedded with the dancing princesses is the Frog Prince. He isn't actually a prince either, just to even things out, but he is sweet and understanding and strong just when he needs to be, and very deeply in love, which is also a generally attractive trait.
Appropriately for a fairytale, a lot of the story-line is wrapped around the two love stories of the two oldest sisters, and the various obstacles that have to be overcome to reach the eventual happy endings. For Jena, the obstacle is her cousin Cezar (see the above rant) and her own practicality, and for Tatiana it is a combination of vampires and her own (rather hysterical) fears. You'd think vampires would be a worse thing to overcome than an overbearing cousin, but in this case, you'd be wrong. The vampires stick to being creepy and insinuating, but don't actually do much. Cezar, on the other hand, is just scary. (The young men in question have their own problems, but aside from the one about being a frog, they tend to happen mostly off screen, as it were).
If you like retold fairytales and solid love stories, I highly recommend this one. It's certainly worth reading once, or twice, or three times, and I'll never get tired of the eventual climax to Jena's love story. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself wanting to shake some sense into a few fictional people.