15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Magical Addition to the 'Once Upon A Time...' Series, November 9, 2005
This review is from: The Night Dance (Once Upon a Time) (Mass Market Paperback)
Rowena, the youngest of twelve sisters, has been held a prisoner in her home, along with her elders, since the day her mother disappeared years ago. While her home is larger than a castle, and quite comfortable, living within the walls of it day after day, never seeing sunlight slowly eats away at Rowena, until she cannot take the imprisonment anymore. So, over the course of a few weeks, she breaks a hole in the wall, and each day, when everyone is preoccupied, she wiggles her way through the hole, and dances in a magical forest. Over time, she invites her sisters to join her. But when their father, Sir Ethan, discovers that their slippers are tattered and torn each morning, he posts a challenge to all the men in the village that whoever is able to tell him where the girls are slipping off to at night, can marry the daughter of his choice. Meanwhile, Rowena has already had her heart captured by Bedivere, a knight who must return the powerful sword, Excalibur, to a mysterious lake. Bedivere wants nothing more than to marry Rowena, but Sir Ethan's challenge is his only way. Now Rowena must choose if revealing her secret to Bedivere is truly worth it...
I have read every ONCE UPON A TIME...book since they were first released. Some are marvelous, while others are mediocre. Suzanne Weyn's THE NIGHT DANCE - based on the story THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES - is one of those installments that is great. The characters are enchanting, and the descriptions of the magical forest, and lake where Excalibur must be returned are magical. Weyn's descriptive talent truly brings the story to life, so much so that the reader feels as if they are dancing alongside Rowena and her sisters in the forest. Overall, this is a magical story. One that must be read by all fans of fairytales.
Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
It must have been the shoe bill..., March 11, 2007
This review is from: The Night Dance (Once Upon a Time) (Mass Market Paperback)
Lately, I've been exploring the world of rewritten and revised children's stories, most of which are the fairy tales that most of us grew up with. One of my favorites is by Hans Christian Anderson, about the twelve princesses who drove their father mad by appearing every morning with their slippers in tatters -- after being locked in their bedroom every night.
Sir Ethan finds himself chasing a boar in the middle of a dense forest when the boar rolls on the ground, creating a lake and transforming into a beautiful woman. She is Vivienne, a sorceress from Avalon, and both she and Sir Ethan fall in love with one another. Sir Ethan settles down with her, and builds a home of peace, while Vivienne quickly drops a litter of twins every year, each one a girl, until six years have passed, and there are twelve little girls about the place, that she calls her 'princesses.'
But when the youngest pair are toddlers, Vivienne is wandering in the woods near her home, when she is attacked by her sister, the wicked Morgan La Fay. Morgan imprisons Vivienne in the lake, creating a barrier that prevents her from either returning to the mortal world, or going on to Avalon. And heartbroken Sir Ethan finds himself with twelve motherless daughters to raise.
Thinking that Vivienne has willingly abandoned him and his daughters, he decides to imprison his children in his manor house, by enclosing them in high walls, and never letting them enter the outside world. And the youngest, Rowena, grows up filled with a hunger to break out of the walls that surround her.
When she finds a crack in the wall, she steathily chips away at it until she can escape into the woods. There she meets the one survivor of King Arthur's Round Table -- Bedivere, wounded in mind and spirit, and seeking to return the sword Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake.
How it all ties into the twelve princesses who slip away at night to dance their slippers to shreds is the second half of this short novel. There's not a lot of humor -- save for some antics by Morgan trying to disguise herself as a mouse to discover how to imprison Vivienne and her daughters for good -- and due to the fact that the novel is under two hundred pages in length does not leave a lot of room for character development.
That's one of the major flaws of the novel. While it does have a strong start to the story, by the end, it has all fallen apart. The imagry isn't that vivid, and the entire narrative is forced. The princesses are little more than cyphers, with only the eldest, Eleanore, and the youngest, Rowena, having any sort of things to do besides looking pretty and being rather simple. Even Morgan and Vivienne are rather lifeless, and Bedivere isn't much more than a handsome stud for Rowena to fall instantly in love with, but there isn't any underlaying passion to explain why they fall for one another.
Marketed for young adults in a series called "Once Upon a Time...," I found this one to be a grave disappointment. There's some magic, and the bare bones of the story, but author Suzanne Weyn seems to be having a hard time deciding if she is writing a novel set in the Arthurian mythos, or reworking a classic fairy tale. Robin McKinley in her anthology The Door in the Hedge did a far finer retelling of the story, with far more mystery and magic to it, and in far fewer pages as well.
Summing up, I would only recommend this if you have a teenage reader who is entertained by fairy tales, but otherwise, stay with the original story. It's far more entertaining.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful concept, poor execution, October 3, 2006
This review is from: The Night Dance (Once Upon a Time) (Mass Market Paperback)
The concept of this book is brilliant: a melding of the fairy tale `The twelve dancing princesses' with some of the legends about the death of King Arthur. Unfortunately, Ms. Weyn's writing skills were not up to the task she set herself. Her prose is consistently stilted and overly ornate with such sentences as: "Rowena still sympathized with the trapped restlessness she knew her sister felt." and "There was a murmur of approval as this seemed like a fun enterprise."
Once I started reading, the story was compelling enough to pull me through. So, if you are willing to endure less than perfect writing for a good story, by all means read this book. If, however, you are like me and would be pained every time you read a sentence like the above, I advise you to skip this one and read `The twelve dancing princesses' by Robin McKinley.
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