Customer Reviews

The Rose Bride: A Retelling of "The White Bride and the Black Bride" (Once Upon a Time)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

On Rose's 13th birthday her mother makes a wish to the goddess Artemis that her daughter always know that she is loved, for that is the greatest gift of all. The goddess challenges her, asking whether safety and security aren't more important. Mother holds her position, and so she dies, leaving behind a rose bush that whispers to Rose that she is loved. What follows is the typical Cinderella story wherein Rose loses everything important to her, until she's discovered to be the spitting image of the former queen who died in childbirth and for whom the king still bitterly mourns.

In a move either to protect Rose from her evil step-family or to teach her a lesson, or perhaps both, Artemis changes her into a doe. Rose watches from afar as her step-family moves to ensnare the king. True love, it is felt, just might save the day.

I have for the most part greatly enjoyed the "Once Upon a Time" series, and anticipated this book before its release. I am a bit let down. Ms. Holder has some worthy things to say about the nature and value of love, but rather than trusting her story to carry her message, or perhaps her readers to understand it, she frequently spells it out in an effort to drive it home. At the end of the book I had been told how the characters felt and had evolved, but I had not made the journey with them. I wasn't feelin' it.

Early in the story it is hinted at several times that perhaps buried beneath pain and disappointment there are some real people in Rose's step-mother and -sister, but these hints go unfulfilled. The story is prone to abrupt changes of course. I was left feeling like I was chasing after a child with ADD.

I hate giving a bad review, because I know it's incredibly difficult to write a good story. I guess this book is worth reading because after all, it's a fairy tale, but it's not something that captured my imagination, and that's the magic that I hope for every time I read a new book.

Rose's mother, Celestine, grew a glorious rose garden behind their chateau, and central to that garden was the statue of Artemis. Celestine was faithful to her goddess, and on the eve of her daughter's thirteenth birthday, she asked the goddess to give Rose the gift of always knowing that she is loved. Thus began Celestine's death, the growth of the purple roses, and Rose's journey to discovering what love really is.

The elements of love, grief, and dealing with death are central to this book, and I found that it covered all these emotions in a rather realistic way. Rose is told throughout the book, by whispers from the purple roses (which sprouted up after her mother's death), that she is loved, but she can't believe it. How can she be loved when her parents are gone, she has a wicked stepmother, and she has been turned into a deer? Still, she manages to find love in many places, from that of her goddess, her mother's everlasting love, and even the love of friendship and long-lost family.

One thing that rather bothered me about the book was how they worshiped the Greek gods so devoutly, yet spoke French all the time. The use of French was confusing in itself because it was portrayed that they spoke French at all times, yet there would simply be random phrases in the book in French. Kind of like in comic books or on TV shows where they have to remind you that the character is from another country by having them randomly say "yes" and "no" in their own language when they were just discussing nuclear physics in perfect English. Also despite the use of the Greek gods there was also a very definite introduction of the devil as the enemy and witchcraft in use by the stepmother. There was a lot of mish mashing of religions and cultures that just didn't quite fit for me as the reader and kept me questioning the society/culture/religion of the book's characters.

For a relatively fluffy book, it did manage to challenge the notion of love at first sight, and I admired that the main character resolved by the end to only accept true love - not simply a man who would care for her, but one who loved her as well. And even as the king showers her with gifts, it's not until he really forgets about her and looks at himself that he is able to present himself as someone who can love her. These are aspects of love and fairytales that aren't always examined.

This story was not as easy for me to read as some of the others in the Once Upon a Time series. I was not very familiar with the story of the White Bride and the Black Bride so that might have had something to do with it.

I found the story to be a lot like Cinderella but without the fairy godmother. Despite the abundance of magic Rose did much of the "work" of the tale on her own which was good. I did find her character to be strangely unlikeable as she spent much of the 1st half of the book weeping and much of the next quarter of the book being beaten down. Only towards the end when she believes the message of the roses does she really improve as a character.

I also found the king to be lacking. I was more than a little weirded out that he could replace his wife in his affections with another that looked just like her. To have married three people that all look exactly the same was more than a little strange to read even if Desiree only borrowed the form.

It certainly wasn't my favorite of the series of fairy tales.

Every now and then, I need to read something lighthearted. When that craving hits, I tend to reach for an old favourite, or even a fairy tale or two to do some serious escapist reading with. For more than a decade now, there has been some lovely adaptations of classic fairy tales that have been written under the imprint of Once Upon a Time, each one an expansion of a classic for young adult readers.

This time, author Nancy Holder takes a virtually unknown story, that of The White Bride and the Black Bride.

Young Rose Marchand is a very young child when her mother Celestine dies after making a bargain with the goddess Artemis, and creating a garden full of roses, with the purple ones that whisper continually You are loved. But for Rose, that seems impossible, especially when her father comes home and blames her for her mother's death.

Worst still, a strange woman and her daughter arrive stating that they are Laurent Marchand's new family after he disappears. Rose doesn't like Ombrine and Desiree very much, both of them are proud and greedy, and steadily run what is left of her father's estate into the ground. Even her beloved garden is stripped bare when drought claims the land, and despite the roses assuring her that she is loved, Rose starts to loose hope.

Tattered, abused by her stepmother and the odious Desiree, Rose has no idea of how the future will change. But when a stranger buys what is left of her roses from her, the world is about to change for Rose. On the edge of an invasion, the king's minister arrives to take her to the king.

It seems that Rose is the image of the king's dead queen, and he is consumed with the idea of his beloved wife come to life again. But then, there's the tricky Ombrine and Desiree to cope with -- especially when Rose finds herself transformed into a doe and forced into hiding in the forest...

The background of the story has a vaguely medieval French feel, much like one of those ornate tapestries that feature ladies and unicorns holding banners. Holder's writing is very descriptive and visually oriented, and while we don't get to know some of the motivations, there are plenty of scenes of lovers in gardens, purple roses, running deer, and plenty of sinister goings on.

On the downside, there are clearly several elements that are vivid reminders of other fairy tales. Rose seems to be combinations of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and even the Beauty from Beauty and the Beast. Before this novel, I had never heard of the original fairy tale (a search located it as one of the Brothers Grimm). What does save the story is that the author bothers to give her hero a rich back story as to his love for the lost Lucienne, and the role of religion and prophecy in his life. We get to know why he becomes so besotted with the recreation of his first queen, and his own memories. That's a nice twist that I don't usually see in a fairy tale, and the fact that the novel actually improves in the final chapters and that Holder makes the ending rather different than the usual story.

But the weirdest element is that the ancient Greek gods are alive and well in this story, with Zeus and Artemis playing prominent roles, and actively messing about in mortals lives. That was a hard concept for me to wrap my head around, as the setting is clearly a historical Europe, the characters speak French now and then, and the trappings are clearly medieval.

Still, despite the drawbacks, it's not a horrible read. The writing style is fairly simplistic, and while there are some lovely moments, it's clearly for the younger crowd. I give it three stars overall, edging towards a four, but not quite there.

For her thirteenth birthday, Rose's mother Laurent wants her daughter to know that she is loved. So Laurent prays to the goddess Artemis to fulfill this wish, and although she dies, her wish is granted: the purple roses that bloom that night always whisper to Rose that she is loved. However, it's hard for Rose to truly feel that she is loved when everything begins to go wrong in her life: her father quickly follows her mother in death, but not before he had the misfortune to marry the odious Ombrine. Ombrine arrives with her equally nasty daughter Desirée to take over the mansion, dismissing Rose's nursemaid Elise and forcing Rose to be a servant in her own home. When it is discovered that Rose is the spitting image of the king's beloved dead wife, she is brought to the court along with her stepmother and stepsister. However, things are not yet happily ever after, since Rose must still deal with the fact that the king sees little more than the reflection of his wife in Rose's image, and her stepfamily's use of dark magic threatens Rose and those she cares about.

"The White Bride and the Black Bride" is not a fairy tale that I was familiar with before reading this book, although afterwards I looked up the tale. Needless to say, the original is rather more dark and violent, but Holder manages to cover the main ideas of a besotted king, an evil stepmother and stepsister, and stolen identities. However, the influence of Cinderella is more strongly felt in THE ROSE BRIDE than in the version of the original tale that I read.

Although the mix of Greek culture and French language, as mentioned by another reviewer, can be distracting, it didn't particularly bother me. The book is not set in historical France but in some fantasy "Land Beyond" (which had colonies? Somewhere? The existence of colonies was the most confusing for me and was never explained). Furthermore, the Europeans after the Renaissance loved Greek/Roman allusions, so the mixing of Ancient Greece and a pre-modern France isn't a huge leap. FYI for non-French speakers, Ombrine's name comes from "ombre" (shadow) and Desirée's name means desired.

THE ROSE BRIDE is a decent fluff book, but not the best book in the Once Upon a Time series. The set up for the meeting with the king worked well, and then I felt that the story got a little rushed and disjointed. After the build-up about the pretender's rebellion, it is dispatched rather quickly, and Rose's transformation was likewise rather abrupt. While Rose is transformed, she becomes basically an observer and only really interacts with the king. It would have been nice if she had taken a bit more action and actually gotten involved with the other characters instead of pretty much sitting back and letting events unfold until near the very end.

Overall, worth reading for fans of the series and for those who need a quick beach/plane read. It's not going to become one of my favourites, but it's enjoyable enough.

Okay so I had some problems with the writing and some of the story line felt a little far fetched and the characters were kind of shallow and not always very well rounded, but it is a pleasant enough book if you are looking for a fairy tale retelling and you aren't too judgmental of them :) One of those fun, random and slightly mindless books that we all enjoy

Let's face it, you can't really go wrong with anything Nancy Holder writes -- she couldn't do a bad book if she tried, and with "The Rose Bride," Holder's one-upon-a-time story is simply a pure delight.

I do this for a living, and it's such a joy to see somebody who can do it so much better than I.

There's a lot to like in this one. Check it out and see for yourself.