The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

★★★★

"I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than to live a hundred years of the life appointed to me."

This was such a unique book - and an interested take on the fairly tale.  I got a little lost towards the end, but the writing was wonderful and I really enjoyed all of the description of the time period.  The author really brought that characters and the harsh reality of winters in Russia to life!

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge (audio)

★★★★

"They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense.  But now I knew that every mad word was true."

This was a unique combination of mythology and a retelling of the classic fairytale, Beauty and the Beast.  I have read several "retellings" over the past year or so and this one was one of the best that I have read in awhile.  It was filled with so many unique and unexpected aspects and had me hooked from the very beginning.  I loved the description of both the characters and the world that the author created.  I'm still not sure how I felt about the ending, but I very much enjoyed the book none the less.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer (audio)

★★★

"Even in the Future the Story Begins with Once Upon a Time."

Cinderella meets sci-fi / cyborgs / Beijing in fairy-tale retelling and the first book in the Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer.  I wanted to like this book more, but there was just too much going on and not enough development.  The main problem I had was with the characters - especially in Cinder, the main character.  Her actions seemed very inconsistent and I often thought her decisions were based more on adhering to the "Cinderella" storyline and were not realistic.  I kept hoping that she would develop more as a character, but she didn't.  I also would have liked to see more detail and history in the world that the author created.  I did, however, enjoy the author's creative take on a classic fairy-tale and was interested in where the book would go.  Overall, it was moderately entertaining and worked well as an audio book.

After Alice by Gregory Maguire (audio)

★★★

"As for dreams, they are powered by urgent desire, even if that desire is only to escape the quotidian."

I never know how I'm going to feel about a Gregory Maguire book.  Wicked is one of my all-time favorite books and I also really enjoyed the fourth book in the Wicked series, Out of Oz.  I really struggled to get through Son of a Witch (book #2) and A Lion Among Men (book #3) and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister - the only other Maguire book I've read - was good, but not great.  

(There were all read before my review-writing days, so no links...)

I have a lot of admiration for the author and his amazing storytelling abilities and imagination, but I had a hard time getting into this book.  Since the title is After Alice, I guess I was expecting the book to be what happened after Alice went down the rabbit hole and returned from Wonderland.  But instead, it told the story of Ada - Alice's best friend who went after Alice and ended up in Wonderland herself.  Much of the story also focused on Ada's sister Lydia and the town looking for Alice and Ada in Oxford in the 1860s.  This was interesting and gave a lot of insight to the original story by Lewis Carroll, but I still struggled through the book.  It was a little too complicated and I found it hard to focus on what was going on.  I'm sure that is a lot more to the story that meets the eye, but I couldn't figure out what it was.  What I loved about Wicked was the extreme detail of the people and culture of OZ and I felt that this book just didn't have that kind of depth to it.

I don't remember when I read Alice and Wonderland, but I must have been before I started keeping track of the book I read in 2004.  I remember being older - maybe 12 or 13, but I found some parts hard to understand and I was easily distracted while reading it (something that usually doesn't happen to me...)  I liked the story, but it was a little too "out there" for my tastes at the time.  I hoping to go back and re-read it one of these days, so maybe I will have a different perspective reading it as an adult.  

I have a ton of respect for Gregory Maguire and I will continue reading his books, but After Alice was not one of my favorites of his.  I'm sure this will appear to hard-core Maguire fans, but it defiantly isn't for everyone.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

★★★★

"What an unequaled gift for disaster you have."

This enchanting tale tells the story of Agnieska -  a young girl taken from her quiet village to serve the Dragon for ten years time.  No one knows what happens to the girls he takes, but they come back changed.  Agnieska was never suppose to taken and finds her self in a world of magic and mystery as she attempts to figure out what the Dragon wants from her.  And the she has to save her family - and the entire village - from the evil Wood that is slowly destroying them.

The book draw me in from first couple pages - the first couple of sentences actually.  I loved the writing style and the perfect mix of fairy-tale and humor.  My favorite thing about the book was the relationship between Agnieska and the Dragon as they learn to work together and (surprise!) fall in love.  It was essentially an more adult and developed version of Beauty and the Beast.  Both of the characters were so charming and together they created this unexpected, but wonderful chemistry.  The book was also extremely funny.

I would have loved for the book to continue to focus mainly on Agnieska and the Dragon's relationship.  The author did an amazing job, but I felt like there was so much more to explore.  I also would have enjoyed learning about the other girls that the Dragon took.  But, alas Agnieska had to develop her magical powers and go save the world from the evil trees and corrupted royal family (or something like that...).  That's where the book sort of lost me and I lost interest for awhile in the middle.  But, overall I thought it was a wonderfully written story and I'm always a sucker for fairytales.  I also thought the ending was pretty much as close to perfect as you can get!  

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult (audio)

★★★★ 1/2
"History isn't about the dates and places and wars.  It's about the people who fill the spaces between them."

Sage Singer is a loaner in her small town - which is why working the late night shift at a bakery is the perfect job for her.  She loves her job, but has been a in a bit of a rut lately.  Both of her parents have recently died, she hardly talks to her sisters, her boyfriend is married, and her only real friend is her boss.  One day at the bakery, she strikes up a unique friendship with an elderly man named Josef.  Josef is seen as legend in the town - teaching German at the high school and coaching baseball - and frequently comes to the bakery with his dog.  Sage and Josef begin spending a lot of time together, but one day Josef asks her to help him die.  Sage is shocked at the request and Josef confesses that he was a Nazi during World War II.  Unknown to Josef (or so she thinks), Sage also has a link to the holocaust.  Her grandmother was a survivor of Auschwitz.  As Sage struggles to make a decision, she also learns the story of her grandmother.  She is left with many questions about family, forgiveness, and acceptance.

I really enjoyed this book!  I've been wanting to read this for awhile - being a Jodi Picoult fan and having read lots of holocaust/World War II novels.  This book was a little different from her usual.  I had the ending pretty much figured out (which usually doesn't happen) towards the middle of the book, but I kept second guessing myself.  I liked Sage's story, but what really kept me going was the story of Minka, Sage's grandmother, and her experiences during the war.  For awhile, I almost forgot that Minka was just one part of the novel.  I also loved her writing of a fairy tale that ultimately saved her live in the camps.  It was really unique and has so many connects to her life.  This novel brought up a lot of questions about what was right and wrong and if someone can ever truly be forgiven for their past.

Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables by Stephen L. Antczak (audio)

★★★ 1/2

" 'Not my job to judge, boy.' Baba Yaga filled and fit the pipe again.  'But I do observe that its difficult to escape familiar patterns.  When you live your life with cruel words, you look for people to give them to you.  When you escape and evil stepmother, you take an uncaring bride.  When your father throws you out, you love someone who won't love you back.  And to keep yourself in cruelty, you're willing to risk head and hands on the mayors side board.  Keep the pattern going. Hm.' "

Short stories are hard to review.  I found myself really enjoying some of the stories, but others not so much. This collection combines classic fairy-tales with steampunk.  I found the incorporate of steampunk elements in the stories to be really interesting and I'm always up for fairy-tales.  My first introduction to the "steampunk genre" was last year when I read Clockwork Angels by Cassandra Clare.  I had to do a bit of research because I knew practically nothing about it - definitely a unique genre!  My favorite stories from the collection included La Valse, Fair Vasyl, You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens, and The Mechanical Wings.

I've always been really interested in fairy-tales and re-tellings of them.  I am currently reading the Barnes and Noble edition of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales - and I have Brother's Grimm waiting on my dresser.  Since I listened to the audio book, I had a hard time finding a complete list for the fairy-tales.  Here's what I came up with:

La Valse by K.W. Jeter - based on The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen

Fair Vasyl by Stephen Harper - based on Vasilisa the Beautiful by Alexander Afanasyev and tales of Baby Yaga

The Hollow Hounds by Kat Richardson - based on The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen

The Kings of Mount Golden by Paul Di Filippo - based on The King of the Golden Mountain by The Brothers Grimm

You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens by Jay Lake - based on Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault with an adaptation of Little Briar Rose by The Brothers Grimm

Mose and the Automatic Fireman by Nancy A. Collins - based on legends of Mose the Fireboy

The Clockwork Suit by G.K. Hayes - based on The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen

The Steampiper, the Stovepiper, and the Pied Piper of New Hamelin, Texas by Gregory Nicoll - based on legends of the Pied Piper

The Mechanical Wings by Pip Ballantine - based on The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen

Winter Garden by Kristen Hannah (audio)

★★★★★

"Nina stared at the women who had raised her and aw the truth at last.  

 Her mother was a lioness.  A warrior.  A women who'd chosen a life of hell for herself because she wanted to give up and didn't know how. 

And with that small understanding came another, bigger one. Nina suddenly saw her own life in focus.  All these years, she'd been traveling the world over, looking for her own truth in other woman's lives.

But it was here all along, at home with the one woman she'd never even tried to understand.

How could any women know her own story until she knew her mother's?"

"They would always be a family, but if she'd learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn't a static thing.  There were always changes going on.  Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground and sometimes they were explosive and deadly.  The trick was to keep your balance.  You couldn't control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shell from breaking apart.  All you could do was hold on for the ride." 

Goodreads Summary: Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard: the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time - and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya's life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother's life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are. 

As one reader stated, Winter Garden was a "truly mesmerizing and enchanting novel about survival, enduring love, family, and the choices that can forever haunt you."  I have been a huge fan of Kristen  Hannah (especially with Firefly Lane and Night Road) and was excited that she had ventured in the genre of historical fiction.  I absolutely loved this book!  I am a huge fan of anything World War II and this novel had an unique perspective of the Siege of Leningrad in Russia.  I really enjoyed learning about Anya's story as she told it to her daughters as a fairy tale (which I love) and seeing how it shaped their lives both as children and adults.  Hearing the story told this way made the novel extremely powerful and showed the importance of family and learning to live with the past.  I cried through the entire last hour or so on the way home from work.  This was an amazing book and one that I will remember for a long time!

This book was #3 on my top ten list of 2014.

Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samanta Van Leer (audio)

★★★

"Everyone deserves a happy ending."

I'd read a few of Jodi Picoult's books in the past and have always enjoyed them.  I love her writing style and how I can always have trouble putting them down.  This one was very different.  First of all, it was a fantasy and young adult novel.  She also wrote the book with her daughter, Samantha Van Leer.  

Fifteen year old Delilah is a bit of a loaner.  Instead of hanging out with kids her age, she would much rather spend her time reading books.  One book in particular has caught her attention - it's an old children's fairytale that she found at her school's library.  After awhile she begins to talk to one of the characters in the book: a prince named Oliver.  Oliver and the other characters in the book are trapped in the story that they must act act every time someone reads the book.  As Delilah begins to fall in love with Oliver, she becomes determined to get him out of the book.

I enjoyed this story.  It was really cute and a good "modern-day" fairytale.  It was a lot different than what I was expecting, and there were quite a few of unexplained things in Oliver's world, but I'm glad I read it.  I really liked that the actual fairytale was written in between the novel!

* 392.8

I’ve always loved fairy-tales, especially modern adaptations of them.  I got the Barnes and noble leatherbound copies of both Grimms Complete Fairy Tales andHans Christian Andersen: The Complete Fairy Tales for Christmas a couple of years ago and I’m slowly trying to make my way through them.

I love reading books that have fairy-tale elements in them.  (Gregory Maquire’s “Wicked” books are some of my favorite!) I’m always surprised at how different the original fairy-tales are.  They don’t always have the typical “happily-ever-after” endings and I don’t think I would let my future young children anywhere near them until they were much, much older.  But then again, the version I’m familiar with is usually a Disney movie or some media knock-off. 

I’ve also become recently addicted to ABC show Once Upon A Time. Very different and unique versions of fairy-tale stories and the costumes and settings are amazing!

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

★★★★

"What a tragic tale!  Why these stories for children always have to turn out so dreadfully is beyond me.  I think if I ever tell it to my grandchildren, I will change the ending and have everyone live happily ever after.  We are allowed to do that, are we not Mabel?  To invent our own endings and choose joy over sorrow?"

This novel expands on the traditional story of "The Snow Maiden."  It is set in the 1920s in the Alaskan wilderness and begins when a childless couple, Mabel and Jack, build a snow child during the first snow fall of the winter.  To their surprise, the snow child is gone the next morning, but a young girl starts to appear everyday near their house.  As the girl becomes like a daughter to them, Jack and Mabel are left to wonder where the girl came from and how to keep her save.

I loved the mysterious and "fairy-tale" like atmosphere that appeared throughout the book.  I kept going back and forth between thinking that the girl was real and being something that the lonely couple imagined.  Even after finishing to novel, I'm not quite sure I knew who the girl was.

This book was #10 on my top ten list of 2012.

Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire

★★★★

"They could not cross the carpet to take each other in their arms.  Maybe someday, but not today"  More of their childhoods had to be stolen, yet, for that to happen - or maybe some of it returned to them.  The charmless future would show them if, and when, and how."

"I mustn't keep you, dear.  And I have much to attend to myself.  I just so wanted to know if it was true, and now I know.  Maybe Elphaba will come back one day, or maybe she won't, but in the meantime I have known you.  That will see me through, I do believe."

"She would make no plan but this: to move out into the world as a Bird might, and to perch on the edge of everything that could be know.  She would circle herself with water below and with sky above.  She would wait until there was no stink of Oz, no breath of it, no wight of it on any horizon no matter how high she climbed.  And then she would let go of the book, let it plunge into the mythical sea.

Live life without grasping for the magic of it.

Turn back, and find out what that was like; or turn forward, and learn something new.

A mile above anything known, the Girl balanced on the wind's forward edge, as if she were a green flick of the sea itself, flung up by the turbulent air and sent wheeling away."

"Oz at sunrise.  What one makes out, from any height, are the outlines.  The steel-cut peaks of the Great Kells, the pudding hills of the Madeleines.  The textured outcroppings of Shiz, Bright Lettins, the Emerald City...This is a roughed-out landscape only coming into life.  A map done in smudged pencil, a first draft.  Much to be filled in when light arrives.  But thank you, Mr. Baum, for leaving the map where I could find it.

Watching the world wake up, dress itself in the dark, take on its daily guise, reminds me of how we fathom human character when we encounter someone at a distance, at a gallop, in the shadows.  We get no more than a quick glance at the man on the street, the child in the woods, that witch at the well, the Lion among us.  Our initial impression, most often, has to serve.

Still, that first crude glimpse, a clutch of raw hypotheses that can never be soundly clinched or dismissed, is often all we get before we must choose whether to lean forward or to avert our eyes.  Slim evidence indeed, but put together with mere hints and echoes of what we have once read, we risk cherishing one another.  Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through.

To read, even in the half-dark, is also to call the lost forward."

This is the fourth and final volume of Gregory Maquire's "The Wicked Years," an interesting twist on L. Frank Baum's "Wizard of Oz" children's book serious.  The first volume tells the tale of Elphaba, who eventually becomes known as the wicked witch of the west.  "Out of Oz" is the story of Rain, Elphaba's grand-daughter, in the mist of a great civil war in Oz.

These books are one of the best series I have read!  I love Gregory Maguires unique storytelling abilities to capture a world reads already know and turn them into something else entirely.  The second and third volumes took me a little longer to get through then the first (which I've read at least three times already), but reading the final volume made it completely worth it!

This book was #7 on my top ten list of 2012.

A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire

★★★

"The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance; some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase."

Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire

★★★

"Not everyone is born a witch or a saint.  Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all.  We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us.  Beautiful in the concept, if we're luck, but frequently tedious or regrettable as we flesh ourselves out."

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

★★★

"I was born on a farm in Kansas, and I guess that's being just as 'spectable and haughty as living in a cave with your tail tied to a rock.  If it isn't, I'll have to stand it, that's all."

Ozma of Oz

★★★

"You see, in this country are a number of youths who do not like to work, and the college is an excellent place for them."

The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum

★★★★

" 'That proves you are unusual,' returned that Scarecrow.  'And I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration is this world are the unusual ones.  For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.' "

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

★★★★

"No matter how dreary and grey our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than any other country, be it ever so beautiful.  There is no place like home."

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

★★★★★

"People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of."

"The room quieted down.  Elphaba made up a little song on the spot, a song of longing and otherness , of far aways and future days.  Strangers closed their eyes to listen.  Boq did too.  Elphaba had an ok voice.  He saw the imaginary place she conjured up, a land where injustice and common cruelty and despotic rule and the beggaring first of drought didn't work together to hold everyone by the neck.  No, he wasn't giving her credit.  Elphaba had a GOOD voice.  It was controlled and feeling and nothistoric.  He listened through t the end, and the song faded into the hush of a respectful pub.  Later, he thought: The melody faded like a rainbow after a storm, or like winds calming down; and what was left was calm, and possibility, and relief."

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

★★★★★

"She'd been telling it for years, though not when Mother could hear.  Mother would have said Eliza was upsetting Sammy with her fall tales.  Mother didn't understand that children aren't frightened by stories; that their lives are full of far more frightening things than those contained in fairy tales."

After Cassandra loses her beloved grandmother, Nell, she is thrown into a unexpected journey to discover who her grandmother really was.  Starting with an old book of fairy tales, Cassandra is able to trace the footsteps of her grandmother.  Going back and forth between present day and the 1930s, the novel reveals many unexpected twists and Cassandra begins to understand the  dark secrets of her family's past.

This book was wonderful!  I loved everything about it, especially the focus on an old book of fairy tales...some of which were actually included in the novel.  The story kept me reading late into the night and I have since read all of Kate Morton's other three books.  I really enjoyed her other books, all of which go back and forth between the past and present, but this one was by far my favorite.

This book was #2 on my top ten list of 2012.