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Mar. 2nd, 2016 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI was a bit dubious about Intisar Khanani's Thorn at first, mostly due to the Standard YA First Person Present Tense, and also the amount of time it took the book to introduce another prominent female character besides the shy, abused princess heroine who was not Awful.
However, once we got into the meat of the story, I enjoyed it increasingly, and I ended up with a great deal of respect for the book despite the slow start.
Thorn is a retelling of the Goose Girl -- a fairy tale in which the wicked maid swaps places with the virtuous princess while she's on her way to marry a prince that she's never met, until supernatural forces Set Things Right.
The most prominent twist in this version, of course, is that after the swap happens, Princess Alyrra has zero interest in revealing the truth, despite frequent guilt trips from various people including her judgy talking horse, and, eventually, the actual prince. Being a goose girl seems very restful as compared to being a princess! The nice family that works in the stables seem lovely despite the language barrier!
JUDGY TALKING HORSE: Look, your maid is kind of evil and I'm pretty sure this is all part of an evil sorceress' plot to murder your intended bridegroom, don't you feel a little responsible for taking up responsibility to sort this all out?
PRINCESS ALYRRA: Um, I had no choice about this engagement and had literally never met the dude in person before coming here, and therefore feel no responsibility WHATSOEVER.
But of course the rest of the book is about Alyrra growing into herself, and getting to know the country and its issues, and starting to very, very reluctantly feel a sense of responsibility after all.
A few things I very much liked about the book towards the end
- it does the Uprooted thing (though this book actually predates Uprooted!) where the end is about understanding and sympathizing with the villain's tragic backstory, and thus defusing their vengeance!
- Alyrra calling the prince on picking someone who would offer loyalty when given the absolute bare minimum of decent treatment was great, A+. Alyrra consistently refusing to allow the prince to guilt her into feeling like she owes him loyalty and affection was generally pretty great
- and the fact that the end is not necessarily true love, although the possibility is there -- I also appreciated that
...in general I also feel like the book got a lot better once the judgy horse was dead? I'm sorry, Falada, normally I quite like judgy companion animals! But I did not understand his motivations and he was distractingly Narnia in a book that otherwise was very little Narnia.
However, once we got into the meat of the story, I enjoyed it increasingly, and I ended up with a great deal of respect for the book despite the slow start.
Thorn is a retelling of the Goose Girl -- a fairy tale in which the wicked maid swaps places with the virtuous princess while she's on her way to marry a prince that she's never met, until supernatural forces Set Things Right.
The most prominent twist in this version, of course, is that after the swap happens, Princess Alyrra has zero interest in revealing the truth, despite frequent guilt trips from various people including her judgy talking horse, and, eventually, the actual prince. Being a goose girl seems very restful as compared to being a princess! The nice family that works in the stables seem lovely despite the language barrier!
JUDGY TALKING HORSE: Look, your maid is kind of evil and I'm pretty sure this is all part of an evil sorceress' plot to murder your intended bridegroom, don't you feel a little responsible for taking up responsibility to sort this all out?
PRINCESS ALYRRA: Um, I had no choice about this engagement and had literally never met the dude in person before coming here, and therefore feel no responsibility WHATSOEVER.
But of course the rest of the book is about Alyrra growing into herself, and getting to know the country and its issues, and starting to very, very reluctantly feel a sense of responsibility after all.
A few things I very much liked about the book towards the end
- it does the Uprooted thing (though this book actually predates Uprooted!) where the end is about understanding and sympathizing with the villain's tragic backstory, and thus defusing their vengeance!
- Alyrra calling the prince on picking someone who would offer loyalty when given the absolute bare minimum of decent treatment was great, A+. Alyrra consistently refusing to allow the prince to guilt her into feeling like she owes him loyalty and affection was generally pretty great
- and the fact that the end is not necessarily true love, although the possibility is there -- I also appreciated that
...in general I also feel like the book got a lot better once the judgy horse was dead? I'm sorry, Falada, normally I quite like judgy companion animals! But I did not understand his motivations and he was distractingly Narnia in a book that otherwise was very little Narnia.
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Date: 2016-03-03 04:16 am (UTC)I was about to say that that sounds very McKillip-like when I remembered that in McKillip it's usually the protagonist who's on some kind of vengeance quest and needs to be defused from it. (This is one of those motifs I want somebody else to have written a monograph on so that I don't have to.)
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Date: 2016-03-03 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2016-03-03 01:28 pm (UTC)Uprooted was definitely the first thing that came to mind to me here, though, maybe because it felt to me like it came out of the same genre -- like, Uprooted reminded me very much of Robin McKinley, and this to me felt right in line with the Damar books (albeit without all the colonial weirdness.)
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Date: 2016-03-03 06:36 pm (UTC)Hm. I will consider checking it out, then. I can still re-read The Hero and the Crown, but I have been worried about revisiting The Blue Sword for years. I am not sure this novel would be an auto-read otherwise: "The Goose Girl" has never been a fairy tale I cared much about, despite encountering it very early in elementary school.
Do you ever get an explanation for the behavior of the judgy talking horse?
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Date: 2016-03-06 12:02 am (UTC)also you should totally read Skip Beat!, all the girls are so ruthless and ambitious *__* and the narrative loves them all *____*
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Date: 2016-03-06 12:07 am (UTC)There is no explanation for the behavior of the judgy talking horse that makes me happy. >:( I mean, it's not the judginess I mind, it's his presence on the entire adventure, which is pretty much like 'well .... we interacted once and you seemed reasonably decent for a human being .... so I figured I might as well stick it out as your Jiminy Cricket .....?'
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Date: 2016-03-07 04:03 am (UTC)also I have only just this past week read Uprooted and I see the parallel!
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Date: 2016-03-07 05:30 am (UTC)And right? EVIL SUPERNATURAL FORCES TRYING TO DESTROY YOUR KINGDOM PROBABLY JUST NEED A LITTLE LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING.
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