Reviewing - The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale and Thorn by Intisar Khanani

You may be wondering why I am reviewing two books by two different authors in the same blog post. Well there is a reason. Both of these books are retelling's of the German fairy tale The Goose Girl. I am a big fan of fairytale retellings. I have read many, but the retellings of the fairytales that are not as well known have the most potential in my opinion, because we may not have a preconceived notion of how the story ought to go. The Goose Girl fairytale was collected and retold by the Grimm brothers. I think I read the original a long time ago, but only vaguely remembered it when I first found The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.

If you aren't a fan of hers, you might want to ignore that review by Stephanie Meyer at the bottom of the cover. I am not a Stephanie Meyer fan. But she is right about this book and about Shannon Hale. Her books are great. The Goose Girl is the best of the Books of Bayern in my opinion. The rest of the series relies on this first book and are more of Shannon Hale's imagination than anything based off a fairytale. If you or your child like The Goose Girl and also like series, then you might want to check out the rest of the Bayern series. However I found the second book in the series to be pretty violent, so just a heads up.

A very basic recap of the fairytale: a princess is promised in marriage to the prince of a more powerful neighboring kingdom. On the way to the kingdom, the princess is accompanied by a handmaiden and a magical horse named Falada (magical because it can communicate with the princess). The handmaiden is evil and orders the princess to change clothes with her on pain of death and to not tell anyone. The princess does so (in the original fairy tale it's not clear why she doesn't put up more of a fight, but in the retellings this is explained more satisfactorily). When they get to the kingdom the false princess kills the horse and the real princess is given the job of goose girl to the king's geese. The real princess asks that Falada's head be nailed to a gate near where she tends geese. The horse can still talk to her a little (creepy!). The goose boy she works with grows jealous of her skill and the real princess uses the wind to get him away from her (not really explained why the wind will listen to her but again this is explained better in the retellings). The boy tells the king/prince and the king/prince brings the real princess to him and asks her to tell her story. She refuses because of the promise she made to the evil handmaiden (again...not real smart girl here), but he goes out of the room and she pours out her story to an iron stove (kind of weird). He hears the story from the adjoining room and believes her. He brings the false princess in and asks her to choose the punishment for the goose girl. She chooses a perfectly Grimm death (being pulled through town naked in a barrel full of spikes). The king/prince reveals that he knows she's the false princess and she gets to experience the death she wanted for the goose girl princess. The real princess and prince get married.

Grimm fairytales are pretty scary.

Anyway, Shannon Hale's retelling fills in a lot of gaps, adds some more magic (explaining why the wind listens to the princess) and is much more satisfying as far as love stories and adventure books go. It doesn't end as violently, though the false princess definitely deserves it. The real princess learns a lot about herself and the kingdom she's stuck in and becomes a brave, upright person. The most violent/saddest part of the story is probably when the horse dies. I cried. I always cry when horses die in stories. The retelling was a page turner and had so many wonderful elements. Shannon Hale really made the princess a real person...someone you can sympathize with, get frustrated with and root for. She grew in the story, which is an important element in good books. I would recommend this for 12-18 year olds, probably girls only.

The next book is below:

I happened upon this book by accident. I think it was an Amazon recommendation. I didn't know it was another retelling of The Goose Girl. I figured out it was a retelling after the first few chapters, but it is VERY different than Shannon Hale's version. Shannon Hale's is probably G-PG in rating. Thorn is PG-13. I wouldn't recommend this for anyone below the age of 16-18. It had a lot more magic and A LOT more violence. It was grittier in almost every way. The princess in the story is physically and verbally abused by her mother and brother, who are the Queen and crown prince of a small kingdom. She is loved by the staff in her castle, but they can do little to protect her and she feels incapable of really protecting herself from her brother. She is kind of inexplicably desired by the powerful King of a neighboring country for his son. She has been so abused she really has a hard time trusting him, though the reader will trust him and his soldiers from the beginning. There is a talking horse, though he isn't named Falada. He's much more talkative in this version, but he comes to a similar end. I cried again.

There's a bad sorceress/witch who shows up and she's saved from her by an equally mysterious young man the day before she leaves. She is accompanied by the bad handmaiden but instead of just switching clothes, they switch bodies! The bad handmaiden makes a deal with the sorceress and they literally switch bodies. Which is an interesting twist. I can't say too much without giving a lot away, but here are some red flags you will want to be aware of before recommending this to your older teen:

- The kingdom she ends up a goose girl in is very medieval/violent. She is a servant and laborer so she sees a lot of terrible things. She becomes very good friends with her fellow livestock laborers, but the boy she has to work with doesn't like her and turns violent a couple of times. She doesn't get hurt, but it's much less innocent than Shannon Hale's version. Also, one of her good friends gets kidnapped, raped and beaten and ends up dying of her wounds. It is AWFUL. I cried my eyes out. The city is full of evil men who continually kidnap anyone left out by themselves at night. Most are sold into slavery, but what happens to Thorn's friend also takes place. The government of the king does little and seems to know little of what really goes on. The common people must rely on any help coming from a band of thieves who are kind of Robin Hood-like and who Thorn helps, inadvertently. But yea, it was a really heart wrenching part of the book and it was pretty graphic in describing the girl's wounds, though not like...grossly graphic. But just a warning.

- It's not really a romance at all. The dynamic between the prince and the real princess is very different because well..she doesn't look like the real princess. She looks like the evil handmaiden. It does end "happily" but not like a normal fairytale. The real princess has to save him from the sorceress and the sorceress pretty graphically explains why she hates the prince and his family so much. She wants revenge and she describes the horrible death someone she loved went through at the hands of the prince's grandfather. The Prince is not perfect and it shows a kind of dark/light tug of war going on in him. The real princess helps straighten a lot of that out, but she gets hurt a lot in the process. So again...more violence described and happening.

- The bad handmaiden comes to a deadly end...much more like the Grimm fairytale, though not as bad (she's hung, not drug through the streets). But the author doesn't shy away from killing or hurting a lot of people in this version.

- You have probably already figured this out but there is a lot of magic in this book. Not magic that the princess wields, but she deals with it a lot. So if you have a problem with that, just letting you know it's there. And it's not used very nicely for the most part.

I did like this book. It was very different than Shannon Hale's version, though many of the original elements are still there. I am not usually a proponent of dark fairytales, but I liked that this one showed a much darker, harder world...a world more like our own unfortunately. It felt more real in that way. The violence was hard to swallow at times. Not a fan of violence, but I have read the Hunger Games and this book was not that violent. Though the violence in Hunger Games felt more justified (not that I condone violence at all, because I don't). The main character in this one was more savvy and thoughtful in a lot of ways, but it takes her longer to gather the courage or to even care about wanting to get her old life back. She's happier as a goose girl and doesn't really want to trade places again. But she gains confidence and skills and friends and overcomes her fear and really shows that being a princess or queen is about self sacrifice and being there for your people. She ends up helping the Prince and revealing who she is because of her experiences as a goose girl and with the people in the kingdom, as well as partly because she does want to help the Prince (he helps her on a few occasions). I thought that was an interesting take on the story.

Happy reading!

Shelby