CBR17 Book 48: "The Goose Girl" by Shannon Hale

Page count: 383 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

StoryGraph Easy Read Challenge: A book with flowers, plants or leaves on the cover

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Animals (Birds are animals, right?)

Nowhere Book Bingo 2025: A YA book

CBR17 Bingo: TBR (I bought this back in 2009, it's been on my TBR for 16 years)

Anidora-Kiladra, the Crown Princess of Kildenree is taught the language of animals by her aunt while she is still a girl, but she has to hide this from people around her. Unfortunately, she's unconventional enough that as she gets older, her younger brother proves to be a more suitable royal heir and her mother the Queen announces that she's being sent to the neighbouring kingdom of Bayern to be married off to their Crown Prince. Ani, having been brought up believing she would be Queen of Kildenree at some point, doesn't really have any other choice but to obey her mother.

She is sent with a large retinue, including her beautiful and dangerously ambitious attendant Selia. About halfway through the journey, Selia has charmed enough of the guards to enact a coup, and Ani is shocked and devastated to see many loyal soldiers slaughtered around her. She manages to escape into the woods and finds refuge on a secluded farm in Bayern, where her wounds are treated and she's nursed back to health. She discovers that Selia has assumed her identity and is pretending to be the real princess. Once Ani is healthy enough, she makes her way to the capital and gets a job as a goose herder in the king's stables. She hopes to be able to make enough money to eventually make it home to her mother, to warn her of the dastardly deeds of Celia and the rogue guards.

Thanks to her secret skills, Ani is able to charm the geese enough that they will listen to her. She works hard and makes several friends among the other labourers, tending the king's livestock. She befriends the handsome and charming Geric and is, in general, quite happy to have avoided having to marry the prince, whom she's seen from a distance. He appears to be about thirteen, much younger than her. But then Ani discovers that Celia isn't just content to lie herself into a royal marriage; she is also trying to get the king of Bayern to declare war on Kildenree. Ani has to enlist the help of her friends to get to the king before the wedding is finalised.

This is a YA fantasy retelling of Grimm's The Goose Girl, and some pretty bleak stuff happens to Ani over the course of the story. For people who don't like harm to come to animals, be warned that Ani's beloved horse Falada meets a very unpleasant end. I also kept thinking of Anakin Skywalker because of Ani's shortened name, which isn't necessarily the best connotation to have to a protagonist. 

This was a nice young adult book with a plucky heroine and a more faithful retelling of the original fairy tale than T. Kingfisher's A Sorceress Comes to Call, which I read last year. Nevertheless, I much preferred that one, I think the darker, more grown-up themes were better done in that one. 

Judging a book by its cover: Cover design was different back in the early 2000s. I seem to recall that by the later books in this series, they did a complete redesign, leading anyone who owned the series to the cruel fate of owning mismatched books (we hates it). This book is remarkably cutesy-looking, considering the rather dark subject matter. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR2 Book 56: "The Book of A Thousand Days" by Shannon Hale

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: June 7th, 2010
Date finished: June 8th, 2010

The Book of a Thousand Days is a retelling of the Grimm fairytale Maid Maleen, set in a world inspired by medieval Mongolia. Dashti is a young maid who is bricked into a tower with the Lady Saren, who is being punished by her father because she refused to marry the suitor he picked for her, Lord Khasar. Lady Saren has to stay in the tower for seven years, or until she relents. There is food placed in the basement for them, and ample provisions, but no door or windows in the tower, only a small hatch for disposing of their waste.

Dashti keeps a journal of their days in the tower, Lady Saren cannot even read or write. She is timid and sullen and eats far too much. While Dashti at first is amazed at the amount of food they have, it quickly becomes clear that with the rats in the basement and the quantities Lady Saren eats, they will never survive for a full seven years. Both of Lady Saren's suitors show up outside the tower, the cruel Lord Khasar to taunt and threaten them, and the kind Khan Tegus, who has never actually seen Lady Saren, only corresponded with her in letters. Saren is too scared to talk to either man, and makes Dashti do it for her. Tegus helps the women by giving them a cat, who manages to keep the rat population down, while Khasar throws fire into their hatch and nearly kills them.

After about two and a half years, their food has nearly run out, and Dashti realizes that they must try to escape, or they will starve to death. Since the rats have loosened the mortar in the basement, they managed to remove enough bricks to escape, and discover that everything around them, including the city Lady Saren's father ruled, has been razed to the ground by Khasar. They seek shelter in the neighboring country, ruled by Khan Tegus, and get work in the kitchen as scullery maids. Khan Tegus believes the Lady Saren is dead, and is set to marry another, to cement his alliance against the evil Khasar, who is determined to conquer all the countries in the area.

Unlike in the original fairytale, where the noble maiden herself is the smart and resourceful one, the heroine of the tale here is the servant. Lady Saren is weak, and scared, and fairly useless throughout the story, and makes Dasthi do everything for her, including talking to her suitors. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that she was never treated well by her family, and may be a bit simple, but she was still frustratingly whiny, and I wanted someone to slap some sense into her several times throughout the book. Dasthi was raised on the plains, and is a "mucker", a kind of healer who can sing away aches, pains and even help with injuries. When a friend of Khan Tegus is hurt, she is called in to help, and once it's discovered that she can read and write, she is promoted from scullery maid to scribe, and gets to spend much more time around Tegus, who she has fallen helplessly in love with.

Khan Tegus is nice, and honourable and everything the prince in a fairytale should be. He feels guilty that he couldn't do more to save the Lady Saren, who he believes died when Khasar destroyed her father's kingdom. He does not love his betrothed, but will marry her for the sake of his people, to strenghten their forces against the evil man threatening them. Lord Khasar is a cruel and evil man, and a very convincing villain. Lady Saren finally tells Dashti why she is so scared of him, and why she refused to marry him, and it suddenly does not seem so implausible that someone would choose seven years of imprisonment in a light-less tower rather than marry him. Obviously, this secret is what is needed to defeat him as well, and Dasthi not only saves her mistress and her beloved Khan, but the kingdom and everyone in it.

The Book of a Thousand Days was a lovely, little story, with a very sensible and brave heroine. After travelling in Mongolia last summer, it was a lovely surprise to me that this book was set in an are so obviously modeled on it, something I had no knowledge of when I bought the book. The different customs and traditions added an exotic element to the story, which made it even better. I highly recommend the book to anyone who likes fairy tales.