Valentine Week, Day Four: Fairytale Fantasy

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy5 Comments

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

Find at Barnes & Noble, or at any ebook seller, or at bricks and mortar book stores.

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.

Valentine Week, Day Three: Fairytale Fantasy

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy3 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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.

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

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 Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, alternate history novel
Find it at Amazon.com and at other ebook sellers and bricks and motar booksellers

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke (published in 2006 by Bloomsbury) is a massive novel set in an alternate-history version of Napoleonic England. It is fascinating, amazing, a work of genius, and a tour-de-force (in that her tone matches perfectly the writers of the day–Jane Austen, et al.). I am daunted thinking about trying to describe it in a single post, but I am focusing on one part of the novel, so that makes my task a bit easier.

The novel describes the relationship between two magicians dedicated to bringing magic back to England, where it has been long neglected. Mr. Norrell, the older established magician, is bent on hewing to exacting traditional standards, while Jonathan Strange, the younger magician, chafes under Norrell’s restrictions. Eventually, their magic plays a major role in the British effort to defeat Napoleon, but it takes a terrible toll on both men.

This novel won both the Locus and Hugo Awards for 2005. Clarke followed its success with Piranesi (2020) another highly lauded novel. It’s much shorter, too. Her struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome has affected her ability to write a sequel to Jonathan Strange. Read more about her life and career here.

The subplot, my focus for the purpose of this blog, involves Strange’s attempt to help his wife, who has been enchanted by “the gentleman with thistledown hair,” a fae who entraps her in Faeryland through a magic mirror and forces her to dance away her life. Fairly early in the novel, the gentleman with the thistledown hair (GWTH) meets Stephen the servant (major character in the novel) and whisks him away to a ball in the GWTH’s country house–more or less his fairy kingdom–called Lost-Hope. There Stephen spots Lady Pole, a noblewoman brought back to life by Mr. Norrell, who manages this by making a bargain with the GWTH. The bargain is that the GWTH will restore half the lady’s life–meaning, Mr. Norrell thinks, that she’ll just die younger than she would have. That seems like a good bargain to him; he wants to impress her influential husband with the power of his magic by assuaging the husband’s grief and bringing his dead lady back to life. Mr. Norrell thinks his service to such a powerful family will help his cause: to make magic respectable again. But with typical faerie trickery, the GWTH creates a very different fate for Lady Pole. She’ll spend the waking half of her life with her husband but the sleeping half with the fae, dancing all night at the Lost-Hope balls. Much later in the novel, Jonathan Strange’s wife, Arabella, befriends Mrs. Pole and becomes enchanted herself, leading to the novel’s conclusion.

Folklore underpinnings of the subplot

Recapping 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.

This post is too brief to go into detail, especially about such a massive book, but fairy lore is full of the enchantments cast through dancing, the folklore basis for this part of Clarke’s novel. If a mortal is enticed to dance in a fairy circle, the fairies typically take possession. Mortals who manage to get away typically find that an experience they thought might be minutes or hours long has lasted centuries instead. Another associated folkloric element of the subplot is the mirror as portal from the world of humans and rationality into the fae world of magic. I hope you see the many similarities with the folkloric elements in fairytales like “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”

My thoughts on this book:

This novel is superb. It is sprawling, too; the dance elements are just one part of the tremendous whole. The fae lure into a magic realm of dangerous dancing is a major trope and handled masterfully here. I’ll spend my last post in this series discussing a related issue, the “dance plagues” of the Middle Ages, where dancing was seen as a literal ensnarement of the devil. In Clarke’s novel, the fae inhabit a land that is not quite hell, but it’s certainly hell-adjacent, and the dancers inhabit a kind of hell. Clarke is a wonderful writer. Don’t be put off by how long this novel is, if you are the kind of reader who might be. Just dive in for one of the great reading pleasures of our era.

Side note: The novel was made into a BBC mini-series. I’m not the kind of person who thinks the book is always superior to the movie–I like to think, How good is this book AS a book? And then, How good is this movie (or tv series, or whatever) AS a movie? Sometimes the movie is better. In this case, though, the book hands-down wins, because it is just so brilliant. The series is fun to watch, though.

Valentine Week, Day Two: Fairytale Fantasy

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy3 Comments

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.

TODAY, 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.

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 Midnight in Everwood, by M. A. Kuzniar

Midnight in Everwood, fantasy novel based on the Nutcracker ballet
Find it on your Kobo app or at the Kobo store, or other ebook sellers as well as at bricks and mortar bookstores.

Midnight in Everwood (2022), by M. A. Kunziar, published by HQ (an imprint of Harper Collins), bills itself as an “historical romance.” It’s set in Edwardian England, and the author has clearly and well researched the era. References abound to all things of the era, and to the locale of the (realistic) part of the story, Nottingham, England. They are sprinkled everywhere. As an admirer of historical fiction, I appreciated the authenticity, although I have to admit these references were sometimes not smoothly integrated into the narrative but kind of stuck in there to signal that we’re reading about a real place and time. That’s important, though, because the novel gives us the realistic setting as a wrapper around (forgive me for giving in to the impulse!) a candy center set in a candy fantasyland. The story centers on Marietta, a young woman committed to her passion and talent for dancing ballet. Unfortunately for her, she is the daughter of a very proper and upwardly-striving Edwardian family. They’ll never let her dance professionally, and they insist that she marry, or they’ll cut her off from her inheritance. If you love Regency romance, you know this means social death to a young lady. Marietta’s last chance to dance will be at her parents’ annual Christmas Eve ball, where a family friend has erected an elaborate stage set. The friend, the mysterious and wealthy Dr. Drosselmeier, is also Marietta’s suitor. When Marietta flees backstage from Drosselmeier’s unwelcome advances, she hides in–get this–a wardrobe, which leads into a magical snow-kingdom. This is where the novel moves from romance–historical romance, at that–into fantasy.

The Nutcracker–the tale

Recapping 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.

The Nutcracker ballet, with music by Tchaikovsky (and, traditionally, choreography by Marius Petipa), was first performed in 1892 and has become one of the most famed and beloved in the Western canon. You can watch a version here. The ballet is based on a tale, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” (1819), by the German author E. T. A. Hoffmann, a writer who specialized in what we often now term “literary fairytales.” There might be some folk underpinnings, but Hoffman made these stories up, so they are not true folk tales (a.k.a. fairytales). But generations of readers and viewers have regarded them as fairytales anyhow, the same way they regard Cinderella and Rapunzel, two other literary creations. The ballet is actually based on a retelling of Hoffmann’s story by Alexandre Dumas, the famous author of such fat, beloved novels as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. So the Nutcracker story has great artistic chops, and it has been adapted in many different ways and in many different forms over the years.

In Hoffmann’s tale (and Dumas’s retelling), a mysterious toymaker named Drosselmeyer brings toys to the family of a young girl, Clara (in some versions called Marie). The girl is drawn to an ingenious nutcracker dressed like a toy soldier (by now a fixture in Christmas pop culture). The girl has a dream in which toy soldiers led by the valiant nutcracker battle an army of mice. She is whisked to a magical forest, where the nutcracker turns into a human prince and gives her a marvelous tour of the Land of Sweets. Details of the story vary from version to version, but those are the basics.

Christmas nutcracker soldiers

My thoughts on this book:

This novel tries so hard. The historical details are authentic, although they tend to be shoved in the reader’s face. The ballet details. . .let’s just say I don’t know much about ballet, but I believed every word. I think this is the place the novel shines. Others more knowledgeable than I am may have a more informed opinion. Send in a comment if you’ve read the book and agree/disagree/want to add more. But anyway, I loved the combination of ballet as an art and practice with the re-envisioning of a beloved ballet’s story.

When Marietta gets to the land of sweets, though, the book goes a little sour on me. I mean, every single piece of candy, slice of pie, whip of meringue that can possibly be described. . .is described. My cavities began to ache. Again, though–especially in romance literature, there’s an entire subgenre of baking romance. No, seriously. So there are readers who may love this whole aspect of the novel even if I didn’t.

The main reason the novel fails to win me over is its writing style, however–so overly formal it tilts into awkward, and then at times floridly over the top. This novel does have its fans, though. You, dear reader, know yourself. You might just love it.

A fascinating side note:

Did you notice that Marietta goes through a wardrobe to get from the real world to the fantasy world? Wow. Shades of C. S. Lewis. “Portal fantasy” in which characters make that transition use similar devices all the time–think of Harry Potter and the train station–but a wardrobe? I only know of one other, the one in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and its siblings. I tried looking up this plot point to see if anyone had ever noticed and discussed the similarity, but I didn’t get very far. Again, readers, if you know more than I do, let me know in the comments.

Content warnings:

  1. Ok, don’t give this novel to a very young teen to read, at least not without thinking about your teen’s level of maturity. Partly, the book is fantasy. Partly, it’s romance. If you know anything about romance novels, you know they come in flavors: “sweet,” “clean,” and “low-spice,” but also “hot,” “spicy,” all the way to erotica. In a “low-spice” romance novel, there may be a sex scene or two, but these scenes are either “closed door” (as in, you know what’s going on behind the door but the writer doesn’t spell it out) or “fade to black,” as in a sedate movie that looks away from the naughty bits. There’s a scene in this novel that is not really spicy and explicit, but not exactly closed-door or fade-to-black. Just saying, for those who worry about these things. I actually don’t (as evidenced by my own novels, which are not. . .quite. . .YA. . .enough sometimes), but some may.
  2. Toothache.

My experience buying this book:

I read this book through the Kobo app on my iPad. Getting the book, for me, wasn’t as straightforward as buying a book for my Kindle device, but it was pretty easy, or would have been if not for a glitch in the app. I’m sure if I had a Kobo reading device, buying the book there would have been just as easy as buying on my Kindle. As it was, I needed to go to the Kobo web site and buy it from there (note–I’m using the U.S. site. Your experience may be different if you are reading from a country other than the U.S.). By the way, you can enroll in the Kobo Plus subscription service to read many ebooks free.

Once I had purchased from the Kobo web site, the book appeared on my iPad’s Kobo app–or would have, if not for one glitch, when nearly all of my books on Kobo disappeared from the app. I had to delete the app and re-install it to see my books. That was a pita. The problem, though, is not Kobo’s. It’s a problem Apple created when it ensured that only its own iBooks store could process ebook sales directly from the app. That’s good for Apple’s bottom line, not so great for readers who get their books elsewhere.

One solution: 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. AND THE LIBRARY. In the U.S., your public library is full of free-to-read ebooks. I’m not sure about library policies elsewhere.