Fairytale Cocktail

Whereas Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier is no work of art, it was darned enjoyable and exciting. It's an appealingly dark, quasi-feminist, creative retelling of the fairy tales of the Twelve Dancing Princesses and The Frog Prince, set in Romania (hence, the inclusion of vampires). About a third of the way into the book I found it nearly impossible to put down. The characters had just enough depth to make them interesting, and I was fond of Jena, the practical young heroine and second sister. I did spend most of the book wanted to slap Tati, the eldest sister, who was dying of a consumption (i.e., uber-dramatic, self-imposed starvation a la Wurthering Heights).

There were some nice little details; my favorite was when a thus-far intimidating character smiled for the first time at the end of the book, and his crooked teeth "turned him from coolly handsome to charmingly plain." How often in fairy tales (or any tale) does a character improve by going from beautiful to ordinary?

That's pretty much all I have to say about it. It was very fun. I regretted coming to the end and being left with no more to read.