This is the only book of Tepper's that I disliked. I felt as if she got on a soapbox and literally screamed her message at her audience. I gave away my copy. ( )

My first forays into the fantasy genre. The book was a pretty easy read; I skipped some parts because it was rather lengthy but still caught the storyline. Interesting way of linking up many of our favourite childhood fairy tales together. Good book to spend a few lazy afternoons reading. ( )

This is Sleeping Beauty with a twist, and definitely not intended for children, as it's an enchanting but also frightening retelling of this much loved fairytale. We hear about how Beauty evades the sleeping curse, by getting it placed on her half-sister instead. She manages to escape from the castle by using a magic cloak that takes her into the 21st century. She does lots of time traveling and visits strange and wonderful places - from this world, to the future, to a world of imagination, Fairyland and even Hell. Fairyland was my favorite; Sheri Tepper really brought it to life with her wonderful vivid, descriptive writing. A lot of my favorite fairy tales are woven together in this book, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzal, Frog Prince, Tam Lin and Snow White are a few of them, and they are all given a marvelous slant . There are some very scary moments, particularly a traumatic rape scene, in which I think Tepper is trying to explain the possible outcome of mankind's use of senseless violence and pornography. Underneath this magnificent retelling of our well loved fairytales is a message that mankind is destroying nature, and if we don't wake-up to what we are doing then we will destroy the world as we know it. I can't decide what genre I would put this book in as it's part sci-fi, part time-travel and part fantasy. It's a mix that worked marvelously well for me. I will definitely be reading some more of Tepper's books. ( )

http://spwebdesign.livejournal.com/52... ( )

http://spwebdesign.livejournal.com/52... ( )