The Castle Behind Thorns

A broken castle lies surrounded by a wall of fierce thorns. Nobody goes near it, nobody speaks of it. Every item in every room of the castle has been sundered, ripped it two by some unimaginable force. And within the castle lies a girl who is sleeping.

No. Within the castle lies the body of a girl who is dead.

Sand doesn't know how he came to be in the castle. He ran away from home, fell asleep by a roadside shrine, and woke up in the castle's kitchen fireplace. Nor does he know how to get out -- the thorns are just as fierce when approached from within. So, he starts setting things to rights, as much as he can. He patches up furniture, twists torn bedding into a rope for the well, collects scraps of metal near the smith's forge. He even show more ventures down into the castle crypt, where he straightens the body of a girl his own age, thrown onto the floor like a rag doll during the sundering (though fortunately still in one piece). Nothing grows in the castle grounds, but the food that was in the castle is well-preserved, simply dried out. Sand starts to get to the point where he can manage, though he doesn't relish the idea of spending his life in the castle. But then everything changes again: Perrote, the girl from the crypt, wakes up. She's neither a ghost or a zombie, but simply a girl Sand's age, who was dead for a while but has come back to life. Working together, Sand and Perrote mend many things in the castle, and forge the beginnings of a friendship as well -- but can they figure out how to break the curse and remove the thorns that imprison them?

As you can see, this is almost a Sleeping Beauty retelling, but not quite. And, just so you know, there is no kissing in this middle-grade novel, so that's not the solution to the mystery! Over the course of the narrative, Perrote's back-story is revealed, and readers get a slowly dawning sense of why she is alive again and why Sand is the one sent there to be with her. This makes for leisurely pacing -- this isn't the sort of book that drives you on to the conclusion. The setting and the characters make up for any shortcomings in plot and pacing, though. I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it. show less

Great fairy tale reimagining!

Sand wakes up inside a fireplace inside a castle surrounded by thorns, in which every single thing is violently torn in two. He's an enterprising young man, who yearns to be a blacksmith, so he sets about mending what he can, and that action causes the story to unfold.

I particularly enjoyed the medieval French setting and the magical, mythological, and historical details. There is a princess, eventually, but she's far more interested in astronomy than anything else. A magical tale, but more one of finding your passion and finding a way to achieve it without tearing your family asunder.

Advanced reader copy provided by edelweiss.

The thorn-covered castle on the hill above Sand's village was abandoned twenty-five years ago after an earthquake, or so Sand has always been told. But when Sand wakes up in the castle's fireplace with no memory of how he got there, he knows that no earthquake caused the damage he sees. Every object in the castle from the anvils to the clothes has been sundered into two. With no way past the attacking, poisonous thorns at the gate, Sand begins to mend the castle to make it livable.

Meanwhile, Perrotte, the count's daughter, wakes up in the castle crypt. But Perrotte died twenty-five years ago under mysterious circumstances.

Sand and Perrotte work together to mend the castle and solve the castle's mysteries. How and why was the castle show more sundered? How did Sand appear in the fireplace? Who murdered Perrotte and why was she resurrected?

This is a dark retelling of Sleeping Beauty for middle-grade readers. I could not stop reading until I found out what happened to Sand and Perrotte. show less

When Sand wakes up alone in a long-abandoned castle, he has no idea how he got there. The stories all said the place was ruined by an earthquake, and Sand did not expect to find everything inside-from dishes to candles to apples-torn in half or slashed to bits. This "sundering" was not the result of ant act of nature. Nothing lives here and nothing grows, except the vicious, thorny bramble that prevents Sand from leaving. The food left behind has not spoiled, it has just dried out so Sand has food to eat.

To survive, Sand does what he knows best, black smithing. He fires up the castle’s forge to mend what he needs to survive. But the things he fixes work somehow better than they ought to. Is there magic in the mending, granted by the show more saints who once guarded this place?

Unexpectedly, Sand finds the lost heir, Perrotte, a girl who shares the castle’s astonishing secrets and dark history. Putting together the pieces-of stone and iron, and of a broken life-is harder than Sand ever imagined, but it’s the only way to gain their freedom, even with the help of the guardian saints. show less

This novel is about healing.

Sand wakes up in the fireplace of a castle behind thorns. Many years ago, the castle was split. Everything in the castle was sundered. Sand finds himself alone, hungry, and thirsty. He starts putting the castle to rights because he doesn’t have anything else to do and it only seems right. He finds the King’s daughter’s bones and is appalled that they are had mess up, so he sets them right.

Perrotte awakens from death in the tomb and discovers Sand living in her castle. He shows her how he’s been eating and drinking from the death around the castle. They soon discover that Sand seems to have a special gift for mending. They just need to figure out how to get the thorns to go away so that they can get show more out.

This novel is nothing like what I was expecting. I thought it would be a typical fantasy novel with a journey involved and good vs. evil, etc. Instead, it’s a story of relationships and healing those divisions. It’s not an adventure novel. It’s a thoughtful and interesting look at mending. show less

The Castle Behind the Thorns by Merrie Haskell is a middle grade fantasy where a boy named Sand wakes up trapped in a castle where literally everything (down to the bedsheets and individual pieces of straw in the stable) is broken (or ripped, or bent, or split in half). This castle is surrounded by a giant hedge of raspberry thorns that actively attack Sand when he tries to leave. Things get curiouser and curiouser as Sand starts to try to fix a few things and survive in this castle until he can find a way out. The Castle Behind the Thorns is a separate story from Haskell’s previous books, but in the same light and unique fantasy vein and with a few references to other stories thrown in :D.
Note: I received The Castle Behind the Thorns show more through Edelweiss for an honest review. Some things may have changed in the final version.



The Castle Behind the Thorns by Merrie Haskell
Published by Katherine Tegen Books on May 27th, 2014
Genres: Fantasy, MG
Length: 336 pages
How I got my copy: Edelweiss

When Sand wakes up alone in a long-abandoned castle, he has no idea how he got there. The stories all said the place was ruined by an earthquake, and Sand did not expect to find everything inside-from dishes to candles to apples-torn in half or slashed to bits. Nothing lives here and nothing grows, except the vicious, thorny bramble that prevents Sand from leaving. Why wasn't this in the stories?

To survive, Sand does what he knows best-he fires up the castle's forge to mend what he needs to live. But the things he fixes work somehow better than they ought to. Is there magic in the mending, granted by the saints who once guarded this place?

Unexpectedly, Sand finds the lost heir, Perrotte, a girl who shares the castle's astonishing secrets and dark history. Putting together the pieces-of stone and iron, and of a broken life-is harder than Sand ever imagined, but it's the only way to gain their freedom, even with the help of the guardian saints.

Strengths:
I absolutely loved the castle setting in The Castle Behind the Thorns. Sand knows of the legends about the castle, but the way that even the apples and bread loaves are split in half suggests that the townspeople don’t actually have any idea what happened to the castle. It becomes more and more clear that there is magic of some kind involved, which just leads Sand to discovering more interesting things about the world and the castle :D.
Speaking of magic, Sand has mending magic! I love coming across new ideas for magic systems, and Sand’s is a pretty cool trick. I won’t give any of the more interesting events away, but while Sand doesn’t love his magic, I did ;-).
Sand isn’t alone in the castle for long and it was awesome to see a friendship between a girl and boy that didn’t immediately jump to romance of any kind. Boys and girls can be just friends :D. This is something that I love about middle grade stories, ha. But seriously, they’re friendship goes through some ups and downs, and becomes all the stronger for it, which was awesome to read about.
I’ve only read one other Haskell book, The Handbook for Dragon Slayers, but it is totally refenced in The Castle Behind the Thorns! There may have been more references that I missed, but even just the one was fun to see, since it makes it clear that these are stories from the same world, just different regions. I love it when authors start using independent books to build a richer world for the more obsessed fans, hehe.

Weaknesses:
The ending of The Castle Behind the Thorns ended up feeling pretty anticlimactic. I won’t give anything away, but once I hit the end, I felt the need to shrug :(.
There is a fair amount of magic thrown about in The Castle Behind the Thorns and only some of it is explained all that well. I can forgive not getting all the gory details of course, but it was more that the logic behind the magic that was explained didn’t really seem to flow all that well into the events that then took place.
I was really excited during the first half of The Castle Behind the Thorns, but then the second half started to lag since we’ve figured out pretty much everything and it turns into general survival and eventually politics. Once I knew everything about the magic and setting, I got a bit bored unfortunately.

Summary:
The Castle Behind the Thorns is a fun middle grade fantasy with a cool setting and magic system. I’m really excited to see Haskell building a world with independent books that subtly build off each other. If you’re a fan of Haskell’s writing or looking for a light and fresh middle grade, The Castle Behind the Thorns will probably be perfect for you. show less

I loved reading this as an ebook because I could select a name and read a Wikipedia entry about that person. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known that some of the character and places in the book were based on real people, or at least real legends (though I never figured out the faceless woman or the dark haired woman as they didn't have names).

I started reading without knowing what the book was about. Unless there's a blurb in the front of the book, you can't simply flip to the back of an ebook to read the synopsis, and I had forgotten why I wanted to read it in the first place. I read the first few pages and thought, "Oh, Sleeping Beauty." But then after he finds the body of a dead girl and doesn't kiss her, I was very intrigued at where show more the story was going to go. I was not disappointed.

It was very original, real despite the magic, and had a great message that was believable and inspiring without being preachy. show less