This version of "Sleeping Beauty" spans twenty-one years, which may explain the slackness of the plot: the narrative isn't structured so much as strung together. The book follows chronological episodes in the life of Rosie, who can talk to animals, is apprenticed to the local blacksmith, and doesn't know that she's fated to die on a spinning wheel. Dealing with this novel as if it has a conventional narrative arc -- with all those attendant goodies such as rising action and dramatic tension -- is doomed to disaster; the book happily meanders along at its own pokey and pointless pace. On the other hand, as far as the detail and imagery and insight of those individual episodes go, it's whiz-bang. You can hardly turn a page without stumbling across a charming sentence. ( )

When a princess is born in a land of magic, a fairy gets her feelings hurt. But Pernicia was just waiting for an excuse and the princess’ naming day.was the perfect time to cast the curse. So Rosie must be hidden until she is strong enough and has the allies to defend herself. A loving tale of life and change. Strong characters, good story, a little long.🌈☀️🌙⭐️🐿🐀🦫🦝🐇🐓🦮🐎🐂🐭🐤🦊🦊 ( )

If possible, I love this book more as an adult than I did when I first read it as young teenager. ( )

A retelling of Sleeping Beauty set in a land steeped in magic, where a young princess is raised in secret by two fairies in a far-off village, and no one, not even the girl herself, suspects her true identity. It’s a bit slow-paced, but it’s a lovely twist on the tale and the world-building is superb! ( )

The world-building here was amazing, as it seems to be in every McKinley novel I have read. In particular, I liked the idea of going into how the effects of a change in spindle design (as opposed to destroying all the spinning wheels in the kingdom) changed the artistry and economy throughout the kingdom, which made the whole thing seem more realistic:

“Everyone all over the country went home after hearing the heralds’ announcement, and at once knocked the pointed ends off their spindles and threw them on the fire, or bashed them with mallets and gave them to their local smiths who threw them on the hotter smithy fires; and then they looked sadly at the mutilated spindles. Weavers temporarily found their thread supplies short, while spinners adapted to shorter and thicker spindles. Later on spinners and tool makers began to develop new spindles and new ways to cast their thread on and off them; over time, in a mixture of anger and fear and resentment, and a fuzzy but sincere desire to show their support for the royal family, a new art form was born: spindle ends.

“At first these were only rough shapings of the beheaded ends, merely to make them look less wrong…Spindles and spindle ends became interesting in their own right; people argued as passionately over which woods made the best spindle ends as they did over which made the best bows and hafts.

“Over more time – and obstinacy – the new spindle ends became…the way things were: and the offhand whittling of them became both elaborate and beautiful…Spinners grew much more organised about finishing off, so that their spindle ends were free for display when not in active use; the broad blunt ends of wheel spindles, in particular, were intricately carved.

“Eventually, in later generations, a hand-carved spindle end was a favourite wedding gift…and especially fine examples of the spindle-carving art were highly prized heirlooms…In neighboring countries, people who saw the spindle ends…adapted their own spinning wheels so that they too could use their neighbors’ beautiful spindle ends, and spindle ends became one of this country’s most prized exports.” (Pages 77-78).

I also enjoyed the idea of the folklore surrounding smitheries, and the practical effects of it:

“There was another more intriguing bit of folklore that said that truth was truth in a smith’s yard…And there was a tradition of moving deadlocked legal struggles to a smith’s yard for the truth to be discovered that way; but this was not at all popular with the smith whose yard it was, since legal truths have a way of emerging with excruciating slowness.” (Page 113).

I also think Woodwold should be considered more of a character than a house, which would explain it using magic to protect the people inside of it as best it could, and also how Rosie could hear it. I know quite a few people here have complained that “magic A is not magic A” (TV Tropes warning if you go to look this up) and how that affected their willingness to suspend belief, but I saw the magic as more of a capricious character itself and so I didn’t have as big of an issue with it. That said, I’m not sure what to make of Pernicia’s castle; that whole part did seem out of character for the magic. Unless Pernicia’s magic was of a completely different sort than the general magic associated with the country, and this was a way of showing it.

I loved the whole world McKinley created, and how she gave enough detail for it to ring true. I also enjoyed the Damar Easter eggs that showed up later in the story: “She [Rosie] thought of her favourite stories…many of the tales of Damar against the North, especially of Harimad-sol at the Madamar gate, and the holding of the way at Ullen.” (Page 284).

I am a cat-lover, so I also appreciated this:

“Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic – which was what all magic was – it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that looked more or less the same from day to day, and might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody’s knee and purred.” (Pages 106-107).

One other fun quote: “Rocks were pretty reliably rocks, except of course when they were something else that had been turned into rocks.” (Page 5). ( )