This year, DANCE your way to Valentine’s Day! Novels based on fairytales and folktales featuring dance.

In preceding years (you can find all the posts archived on my blog, btw–just look for February!), I have posted novels based on worldwide fairytales and folk tales, and on two “literary” fairytales (Cinderella and Rapunzel). This year, I’m featuring a whole week of novels based on fairytales and folktales involving dance. Here are the posts:

Day One of Fairytale Fantasy Week: Entwined, by Heather Dixon–a novel based on the classic fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Find the review here.

Day Two: Midnight in Everwood, by M. A. Kuzniar–a novel based on the story behind the classic fairytale ballet, The Nutcracker.

Day Three: Valentine’s Day itself! The amazing fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke–a novel with a strong dancing subplot. ONE OF MY TWO FAVORITES.

TODAY, Day Four: House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig–another novel based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”

Day Five: Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson–a novel based on the fairytale ballet Swan Lake.

Day Six: Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson–a final choice based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but be warned–it’s nothing like the others.

Day Seven: A wrap-up and a special exploration of the “dance mania” of the medieval period, plus a free download.

TODAY, a review of House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig

House of Salt and Sorrows (2019), by Erin A. Craig, published by Delacorte Press (an imprint of Penguin Random House), amusingly described by a review in the Wall Street Journal as a tale of “a Grimm sea.” Craig’s novel is a YA horror/gothic-tinged take on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Twelve sisters have seemingly been cursed as they die off one at a time. The protagonist of the story, sister #6, Annaleigh, tells the tale in the first person, a typical YA tactic. Her four eldest sisters are dead, each in a different grisly way. Ava, dead of plague. Octavia, fallen off a ladder. Elizabeth, drowned in a bathtub. Eulalie, plunged from a cliff into the rough seas surrounding the sisters’ island home. (I know, I know. . .it sounds straight out of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies: “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs;/B is for Basil assaulted by bears. . .”) Because of the supposed curse, everyone now shies away from the sisters, even the new eldest, Camille, who will inherit her father’s riches. But Annaleigh suspects murder instead. This novel serves up generous lashings of gothic horror, mystery, an ingenious invented mythology, and YA tropes like the spunky girl torn between two equally attractive boyfriends, while stirring in the fairytale magic of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” The distraught surviving sisters relieve their stress and grief by heading into a mysterious magic passageway for nights of forbidden dancing. Meanwhile Annaleigh confronts red herring after red herring (definite sea thing going on here in my post) as she drives toward a solution to the mystery.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses–the tale

First of all, as in years gone by, I should mention what I mean by “fairytale.” No fairies are necessarily involved. The term has evolved to refer to a particular magical type of folk tale that may involve fairies, princesses, and the like, but may not. (A subgenre of fantasy, involving the fae, is an entirely different matter). And sometimes, what readers have come to know as “fairytales” aren’t any such thing–not folklore, passed down anonymously through the generations and centuries, often by word of mouth, but literary creations by artists hoping to mimic the fairytale aura. I should also mention that my blog posts on this subject won’t refer to anything Disney, except in passing. The Disney take on fairytales occurs in a whole world of its own, it has its faithful fans, and I don’t intrude there.

My first post in this series gives the same information: The original tale was collected in 1815 by the Brothers Grimm, nineteenth century German folklorists who were–and remain–famous for their efforts. Present-day folklorists classify this tale as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 306, “the worn-out shoes.” You can read the original Grimm version in translation here. Later collectors of fairytales published French, Russian, Scots, and other versions. Some of the tropes (characteristic features) of the tale include the princesses numbering as many as twelve (sometimes only one), the shoes that mysteriously wear out, the magical place of forbidden dancing, the clever suitor who discovers the secret and wins the hand of the eldest princess. More disturbing features include the idea that the princesses are trapped in the magic dancing venue until rescued, and unsuccessful suitors may come in for cruel or downright grisly treatment. Magic and/or imprisoning mirrors may be involved. Any adaptation may include some or all of these tropes, or turn them topsy-turvy.

My thoughts on this book:

This is a wonderful YA fantasy novel with characters to love and root for, good writing, an ingenious mythological/magic system, and then, on top of all that, horror and mystery. If you like your YA completely sweet, though, the horror might put you off. It gets intense.

I did think, however, that the “Twelve Dancing Princesses” stuff felt a bit tacked on. Was the dancing stuff really necessary to make this plot work? I get the twelve sisters dying off one by one part, and the sinister man Annaleigh meets at the magical ball. I got a bit weary of it all, I must confess, but reader! I am old! I am not the audience for YA. So young readers may love every little bit.

One aspect of this book I REALLY appreciated: it’s part of a two-book series, Sisters of the Salt, yet there is no cliffhanger ending at the conclusion of this novel, book one in the series. If you don’t plan to go on with the series, you’ll still get a satisfying reading experience. If you do go on to the next one, House of Roots and Ruin, about the youngest sister, Verity, I’m not sure how much depends on your having read book one. I doubt I’ll read it myself, but I am sure many YA readers and readers who love YA will rush to purchase it. Go for it!

Content warning:

The horror! The horror! I can imagine some young teens, or maybe even older readers, might get freaked out by the horror and the description of violent, grisly deaths. If this is you: be warned.

My experience buying this book:

I read this book through the Barnes & Noble app on my iPad. Getting the book, for me, was difficult enough that if I hadn’t been committed to reading on different ebook platforms, I might have given up and gone to an easier way to purchase, like Amazon’s Kindle, or even One-Click from their web site, or of course–since I’m using an iPad, Apple’s seamless iBook app. I’m sure if I had a Nook, Barnes & Noble’s dedicated reading device, buying the book there would have been just as easy as buying on my Kindle. As it was, needing to buy from the Barnes & Noble web site put one more difficulty between me and my addiction (books!). The main problem is not with Barnes & Noble. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog series, it’s a problem Apple created when it ensured that only its own iBooks store could process ebook sales directly in-app. That said–the Barnes & Noble purchase felt unnecessarily complicated. (By contrast, the Kobo process was a breeze, and the Amazon process is practically a no-brainer.) I think it took me five or six tries before I finally purchased the book on the Barnes & Noble site. That’s enough to drive an e-reading reader batty–and away. Once I did have the novel on my app, though, reading it there was a very satisfying experience–lots of intuitive tools and easy navigation.

Two great solutions. Let’s hear them again!

• Buy a paperback or hardback copy from your local independent bookstore! (oh, all right, from a chain big box bookstore, I guess, if you just have to.) I myself am hooked on the convenience of ebooks, but you don’t have to be.
• GET THE BOOK FROM YOUR LIBRARY. You may be able to find it there in paperback/hard cover, but in the U.S., your public library is full of free-to-read ebooks, and librarians are great at finding it for you in ebook form if you can’t find it yourself. I’m not sure about library policies in other parts of the world, though. Let’s hear it for librarians, unfairly embattled in these hard times. Who knew anyone would take out after librarians, of all selfless people? It’s like picking the wings off butterflies. Really beautiful ones, too.