Customer Reviews

Spindle's End (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(51)
3 star:		(30)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

From my observations of the Amazon customer reviews, and conversations with my own acquaintances, I have the distinct impression that readers of Robin McKinley's novels can be divided into two categories: those who love both her older works (Beauty, et. al.) and the newer, and those who hate Deerskin and Rose Daughter. Let me say that I'm part of the former, but I think that Spindle's End will appeal to both groups.

Why? Just saying that it's a beautifully written novel isn't enough, I guess. It combines some elements familiar from early McKinley works (the unconventional hero(ine), the surprising spin on well-known stories) with aspects of the later (beautiful, lyrical prose, a surprising (yet satisfying) ending). But all of these elements, familiar as they are, combine to create a novel that is unique. If you've enjoyed anything by Robin McKinley, buy this book. You'll find something to love.

Also--and this isn't a part of the plot at all, so it's not really a spoiler--I was very happy to read that Lissar and Ossin are still happily raising fleethounds.

If you've read McKinley's Beauty, than you're already familiar with her ability to create the most wonderful characters with her lyrical prose. As in Beauty, the heroine in Spindle's End is a completely drawn character whose courage, intelligence, kindness and humor deviate from the stereotypical pretty princess with nothing to do but be rescued. The story is magical, the supporting characters (especially the wonderful animals) make you wish you knew them yourself and the plot keeps you engrossed throughout the novel. McKinley has an amazing talent to take what is old and make it fresh without abadoning the traditional tale entirely. Unlike Deerskin (which is another fabulous and somewhat misunderstood McKinley piece,) Spindle's End can be enjoyed by all ages. Her writing is colorful and inventive without being wordy or dense. The author's spin on the wake-up kiss and the happily-ever after-ending may not be standard, but they are satisfying. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Parents - read it with your child...you'll both enjoy it (and you can help them out with some of the bigger words.) If you enjoy Jane Yolen or Patricia McKillip, you'll definitely like McKinley.

Robin McKinley established herself as a fairy tale author with her first book, "Beauty," over 20 years ago. Her growth as a writer is evident in her new tome, "Spindle's End." McKinley leaves behind Beauty and the Beast, which she has developed in two novels, to explore the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. The story developments are surprising at times but work well in her original treatment. The famous kiss which appears in the most popular versions of the tale is presented here with a new twist. The characters are charming and quirky. I was sorry when the book reached its conclusion and Rosie's story ended.

McKinley has returned to the lighter touch evident in "Beauty" so this book can be recommended to readers of all ages. Books from McKinley are often years in the waiting for her fans. This book was well worth the wait. For a completely different treatment of the same tale, I also recommend Jane Yolen's "Briar Rose."

I intended to like this book from the moment I heard it was coming out. I suppose I'm somewhat dense, since my sister had to realize that the title "Spindle's End" probably had to do with one of our favorite fairy tales, Sleeping Beauty. Now that I've read it, I can't say I'm disappointed, exactly....But for being a new story, it seemed vaguely familiar.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it immensely. The reading was enjoyable, the plot suspenseful. There were funny and sad moments, and the new, somewhat conversational tone of "voice" McKinley uses is quite wonderful. (If you notice, since she's been in England, her expressions and spelling have become decidedly more British.) As always, her plotting and pacing are superb, and her nods to other novels and stories brought a smile to my face. It took me a while to realize why such a satisfying story left me feeling...vaguely DISsatsified; I think it's because it was a little too familiar.

All of you reading this should know by now that this is based on Sleeping Beauty, so I won't bore you with plot details. The main character, Rosie, was lovelable and suitably un-princesslike; but then, so was Harry (of "The Blue Sword"), Beauty of "Rose Daughter," and especially Aerin (of "The Hero and the Crown"). I don't object in the least to having a strong female protagonist -- indeed, that's partly why I love McKinley's books. But in this case, I felt always a little distant from Rosie, possibly because we don't get her viewpoint until halfway through the book (but not even at a chapter break, which was one of the occasionally awkward viewpoint shifts). (Incidentally, I also felt that for as long as we had Katriona's viewpoint, we never really got to know her.) I kept being reminded of other heroines; although, to be fair, I've read so much in this genre that it's not McKinley's fault if I make associations with other authors' books (namely Tamora Pierce's "Wild Magic" quartet). The writing was sufficiently different from and like "Rose Daughter" to keep me interested, but the search for answers magical was almost the same, as if these two books were less about the characters than about the magic. Again, it's not McKinley's fault if she wrote about magic and I wanted to read about characters. Fortunately, McKinley never resorted to withholding information from the reader which the viewpoint character knew; and yet, in this case, it felt a little distancing, because when we were thinking with Rosie, we as readers knew that Katriona knew something that Rosie didn't, and we who had just been in Kat's mind wanted to know, too. I agree with the other reviewer who said that her human characters were not as quickly distinguishable as her animal ones, and some characters never got to be a real person. How much can you tell me, for all that we met them, about Aunt, Narl, Peony? At least the romance in the second half of the book was suspenseful and subtle. As for further familiarities, Rosie's first confrontation with Pernicia, in the purple-skied plain, seemed at first to be lifted directly from "Hero" and Aerin's search for Agsdad (? -- my memory fails me), an (unintentional?) allusion which made visualizing this scene more difficult.

Yet, overall, McKinley's take on the story was as unique as it could be and still be Sleeping Beauty. What this book really deserves is another, more thorough, reading, and I am sure that the characters will stand out more in my mind. Take this review with a grain of salt, since no writer can please every reader all the time, and before now, I had never been disappointed with McKinley's writing at all. After my second or third read, I will be able to distinguish this country and Rosie's scenes from the others, and I will eventually read books that will remind me of this one. (But that doesn't stop me from wanting another Damar book....) :-)

I am one of those people referred to by Elythia who like McKinley's more "difficult" books as well as her earlier ones, but it isn't the return to the more light-hearted themes that made me feel a little let down after reading "Spindle's End". Truthfully, I didn't find "The Hero and The Crown" or "The Blue Sword" all that frivolous, myself. What has always appealed to me in McKinley's work is how very individual the people, animals, and locations are. I may not be able to remember the name of Aerin's horse today, but I certainly know him as an individual, from his slightly greedy nature to his proud courage and his moving slightly short behind. I know how Damar smells, and I would know Rose Cottage with my eyes shut ... So, why do I feel as if "Spindle's End" is just an outline for a much deeper book? The people, animals, and places seemed more like sketches than finished characters. I liked Rosie, especially that her nature refused to be channeled into "beautiful Princess in hiding", but I really didn't see enough of her to know, for example, why Fast was willing to run himself to death for her, if necessary. Nor was there enough of who Fast is (other than slightly shallow and fast) to see where this slightly brainless horse would pull the courage from that he used in fleeing Pernicia. And Peony never really existed to me except as a foil for Rosie, and surely she had to have been more than that! As usual, McKinley writes beautifully, and there are moments of brilliance, but I never really felt as if I was in this nameless country of magic the way I do with the other books. It all seemed a rather well made Potemkin Village, and the people and animals merely walk-ons ...

The first half of this book held me in a way that few modern novels do. As always, I am enraptured with McKinley's storytelling abilities. But I do think that we spend so much time getting to know the land, its creatures, and various inanimate objects (or objects that should be inanimate and aren't) that we're left somewhat high and dry when it comes to the characters. I felt the romances and familial relationships were unconvincing--as if they were included simply because they were *supposed* to be there. Narl and Peony, and even Aunt, were plot devices, not characters in their own right. As a result, the last hundred pages or so fell flat for me. I wasn't enough involved with the characters themselves to care much about what was happening to them and whether or not they made it through. Sometimes that results in my rooting for the bad guy--but I wasn't too impressed with Pernicia, either. And she could've been so good, if McKinley had shown us why she was scary instead of telling us repeatedly how scared everyone else was of her.

That being said, I think this book flows beautifully and that the elegance of the story and description would make it a worthwhile read even if all of the characters had been wooden. I am eagerly awaiting McKinley's next.

"Spindle's End," first published in 2000 is Robin McKinley's novelization of the 'Sleeping Beauty' fairy tale. Inventive characterization is this author's hallmark, and McKinley reimagines and reinvigorates Sleeping Beauty as a princess named Rosie who is cursed to die on her 21st birthday after pricking her finger on a spindle. On her Naming Day, after a very bad fairy named Pernicia delivers the curse, the infant princess is kidnapped by the down-to-earth Katriona (okay, she's a fairy, too, but not in the sense of 'airy fairy') who raises the disguised princess in the distant farming hamlet of Foggy Bottom. Eventually Rosie apprentices herself to a blacksmith, discovers that she can talk to animals, and befriends a girl named Peony.

Peony is actually much more of a traditional Sleeping Beauty--meek, beautiful, skilled in the feminine arts, and somewhat passive. Rosie is an active, callused horse doctor who ultimately takes on the traditional prince's role, with the help of her friends Katriona, the blacksmith, and some very remarkable animals.

Have no fear, "Spindle's End" is not a feminist rant. Men get some very nice walk-on roles and the only really evil personage is Pernicia who hovers threateningly throughout the novel:

"Perhaps I shall even come to her, in secret, tonight...and press her tiny soft hand against the spindle end..."

McKinley has created a densely magicked universe, shading over into cutesy only occasionally. Unfortunately most of the shading was in the first couple of chapters and I almost got clogged by the treacle and stopped reading. I was glad I didn't because this is a marvelous, non-wimpy reworking of the usual 'beautiful woman can do nothing for herself but wait passively for handsome prince' fairy tale.

I have always enjoyed reading Robin McKinley's work and looked forward to diving into this one. However, the detailed decriptions and frequent use of parethetical phrases, made the reading rather cumbersome. The Horn review did a great summation and I agree with their comments.

It's worth reading, but does not draw one in the way her other writings have before. Her desire to create a strong female hero is admirable, but I think it was a bit overdone.

Robin McKinley's greatest strength is her ability to frame a familiar story with enough unique twists to make it fresh and interesting. Her second greatest strength is her wonderful descriptive prose that draws the reader into her fantasy world. In "Spindle's End" she displays both gifts to advantage.

We've all heard the Sleeping Beauty story, but Ms. McKinley puts her own spin on it. What if Rosie grows up as a tomboy in a small village? What if her fairy godmothers gave her skin like silk, lips like rubies, and teeth like pearls--but forgot to to specify that she should be pretty? And what if she has the ability to talk to animals? One of the best things about this book is Rosie's beast-speech, in which cats play riddle games, horses are romantics and foxes "talk about butterflies and grass and weather for a long time while they sized you up".

If you already a Robin McKinley, then you already know that you must read this book. If you're not a fan, then you soon will be.

With recent efforts such as the brutal "Deerskin" and the darkly poetic "Rose Daughter," Robin McKinley, a masterful writer long relegated to the young adult shelves, seemed to be moving into more adult territory. "Spindle's End," flaunting expectations, appears to be a throwback to the lighter mood of "Beauty," her first novel. Not that this is by any means a bad thing. McKinley's style is graceful, vivid, and in this case, funnier than anything she's written since that first marvelous effort. Rosie--like many of McKinley's heroines--is an appealingly down-to-earth princess-in-disguise, and the author places her in an engagingly realized fairy tale setting with more than a few twists. There are also a few sly references to the characters and settings of previous McKinley novels to divert long-time fans. My one complaint would be that the size of the cast (fairy, human, and animal) and limited viewpoints make full character development impossible, to the detriment of certain key plot points. Peony, the all-too-perfect girl next door, and Narl, the taciturn smith and surprising love interest, probably suffer the most from this. "Spindle's End" won't rank as my favorite McKinley effort ("Beauty," "Deerskin," and the Damar novels still take pride of place, although it is interesting to see how much more satisfying her climactic hero-villain confrontations have become since "The Blue Sword"), but it's still a cozy and entertaining read that I recommend wholeheartedly.