Enchantment

An interesting retelling of the Sleeping Beauty and Baba Yaga fairy tales, set in modern day and 9th century Ukraine. Ivan Smetski, a modern day Jewish Ukrainian-American, has been drawn to and afraid of a clearing in the woods near his uncle's Ukrainian farm all his life. On a trip back to the Ukraine to do some research for his PhD he decides to return to the clearing to face his fears and ends up awakening Sleeping Beauty.

Except this Sleeping Beauty speaks proto-Old Church Slavonic and isn't at all interested in having a 21st century scholar as a husband, she needs a 6-foot knight with a sword to lead her people into battle to defend her kingdom from Baba Yaga. Ivan can speak proto-Old Church Slavonic but he can't even lift a sword show more and now he's awakened the princess he has to accompany her back to her kingdom or the spell temporarily protecting them from Baba Yaga will be broken and neither of them will be safe.

Card has done a really good job of making the 9th century kingdom of Taina seem real and believable despite the magical elements. It doesn't feel like the generic medieval fantasyland unfortunately so common in some fantasy books. The discomfort Ivan feels trying to adjust to a completely different culture is also well done as is the discomfort Princess Katerina feels when she travels back to Ivan's time with him.

In some ways I felt there were some missed opportunities with this book though. Ivan is Jewish and travels back to a very Christian 9th century Ukraine. The differences are mentioned, Ivan has to get baptised for example, but nothing much is really made of this. If Ivan had been Christian (or of any other belief/religious system) instead of Jewish the book would have been fundamentally the same. Why not make him an atheist? That could still have brought up issues surrounding baptism. Why was he Jewish? It just frustrated me a little.

So it was a very enjoyable read but I felt it lacked the sort of depth that could have made it a great book. Recommended if you're interested in fairy-tale retellings or Russian/Ukrainian culture. show less

Ivan's childhood was full of changes. His family had to change religions which brought Ivan and his father Piotr to the painful decision of post-infancy circumcision. Then they had to move from Russia to America. Through all of these changes, what brought Ivan peace and stability was running. One run through the forest on his uncle's farm brought him to a magical chasm where the leaves danced away as Ivan approached for a closer look at a woman sleeping on a bed of rock. Ivan did what he did best: he ran.

Years later, Ivan never could shake off the feeling that he should have looked closer at the woman and tried to help her. Through a series of seemingly coincidental events, Ivan finds himself back at his uncle's farm. One curious run show more into the forest and Ivan finds the same woman buried under the leaves. This time, he doesn't run.

This was a selection for a book club that I have recently joined, otherwise I might not have picked it up. This is the first book that I have read by Orson Scott Card as fantasy books are not really my preferred genre. However, fairy tales are one of my favorites, and this came across as a clever retelling of Sleeping Beauty mixed with the folk tales of Baba Yaga and other deities. Orson Scott Card's Enchantment, although fantasy, surprised me in this combination of the three. I was further surprised that there were a few points where I lost interest yet it was quickly regained. This is not the sort of book that I could read in one sitting, as it was rather long and at some points long-winded. However, it is the sort of book that I could quickly pick up again the next day or even a few hours later. That is to say that I found it neither repulsive nor gripping.

I enjoyed the storyline for the most part and I also enjoyed the alternating perspectives between Ivan, Katerina, and Baba Yaga. I thought Baba Yaga was the character written the strongest as she was despicable yet entertaining. I also enjoyed the minor details earlier in the book that became major details later. For example: a vague note from a deceased neighbor in the beginning of the book played a major factor in one of the final action sequences. Although I love fairy tales, I do enjoy the struggle that Katerina and Ivan had in their relationship. They did not love each other immediately, rather they fell for each other at different paces.

I would recommend this book for any reader looking for an enchanting fantasy read with a leading female character and a bit of historical fiction.

On the other hand, I would not recommend this book for readers who do not enjoy foul language, violence, revenge, murder, and sexually suggestive scenarios. show less

Card, Orson Scott. Enchantment. Del Rey, 1999.
A Ukrainian-American graduate student in early Slavic languages is visiting his uncle in Ukraine when he suddenly finds himself naked in the woods where an unconscious woman is being watched by a huge bear. What follows is a very inventive mashup of Sleeping Beauty and A Connecticut Yankee with some trans-temporal skyjacking thrown in for spice. Orson Scott Card has done an excellent job of researching Slavic folklore and history from both the 10th and 20th centuries. I especially enjoyed his depiction of the witch Baba Yaga, who even if she wants to help you, cannot resist doing something nasty to you, like a case of the G. I. trots. Card is an excellent storyteller who has given us an show more exciting plot and four or five well-developed characters. Enchantment is a surprisingly delightful read. show less

Sleeping Beauty sleeps for a thousand years, and a young boy in Soviet Ukraine finds her on a grassy pedastal in a pit in the woods near his cousin's farm, while his parents are trying to get visas to leave the country and emigrate to America. He can't do anything about it, and he convinces himself that it was only a dream. Twenty years later, he's a graduate student, working towards a Ph.D. in Slavonic languages, and his thesis research brings him back to Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. He wakes and rescues the princess, and when they can each see one bridge leading off the pedastal to the solid ground on the far side of the pit, it's not the same bridge. They take hers, and wind up in her 9th-century kingdom of Taina. The show more only survival skill Ivan has for Katerina's world is speaking the language; he has no skills which making him a plausible prince and king in this world. But they must marry, or Baba Yaga, the witch that is trying to destroy Katerina and her father and seize Taina, will win. Ivan, who in addition to his linguistic skills is a pretty fair decathlete, struggles to learn skills respectable for a knight in the 9th century, such as the use of a broadsword, and how not to disgrace himself in 9th century Carpathian society, while Katerina struggles to understand her weird betrothed, who is too educated for a peasant, completely lacks a knight's skills, and doesn't know the most basic, ordinary rules of decent behavior. Meanwhile, Baba Yaga is still plotting against them, and not everyone in Taina is altogether reconciled to the fact that Katerina is betrothed to this weird foreigner who can't fight. I think this is more original and interesting than some other relatively recent retellings of Sleeping Beauty, and Card's a good writer, and he omits the child torture this time. Recommended. show less

Orson Scott Card's retellings are always a little strange, but I really liked this one. It was cool to see a novel with magic, time travel, and religion all playing a part, and the fact that it was loosely based on Sleeping Beauty made it all the more fun.

As a young boy, Ivan glimpses a princess asleep in the woods. As an adult coming back to the Ukraine to study after years in America, he returns to those woods and wakes the princess with a kiss. However, nothing is as simple as Disney had made it seem, and Ivan finds himself engaged to Princess Katerina and follows her back to the late 9th Century where the witch Baba Yaga terrorizes all in an attempt to seize the king’s lands. Ivan, a Twentieth Century academic, is unable to even handle a sword – certainly not the hero all had hoped for and relied upon to protect the kingdom. Katerina and Ivan must work together to out run and out wit the deadly Baba Yaga and to plot her defeat.

I loved this book. I thought it had fascinating, show more complex characters, a rich, detailed narrative and a wonderfully irreverent sense of humour. Fantasy books can take themselves, and their heroes and heroines, too seriously but that’s certainly not the case here. Ivan and Katerina are extraordinary people but both are still sympathetic and believable, with more than enough faults. Katerina has an innate nobility about her, the confidence of someone born to rule and more than capable of doing so. Ivan falls short of her rather lofty expectations but, though somewhat insecure in his new setting and role, he remains strong. The evolution of their relationship is believable, as are the prejudices and misunderstandings that at times keep them apart.

Full review: http://thecaptivereader.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/enchantment-orson-scott-card/ show less

So, this is a book about the "real" source of Russian fairy tales -- a kid named Ivan kisses a Sleeping Beauty princess in the woods, they marry, they fight a witch. Only Ivan is a modern Ukrainian-American Jew, and his Sleeping Beauty is a Christian from the ninth century. The tale, of course, plays out in both modern and medieval times, and There Is Culture Shock.

There are two things with this book. First, it's a "modern take" on the fairy tale genre. That means there is zero world building, zero character building, and zero plotting. There is nothing new in this story. The author doesn't seem to realize it, and goes on and on for 400 pages anyway -- many of which are full of repeated bits of "oh dear, this world is so strange! let me show more list the ways.... oh dear, do I or don't I want to be with you? let me list the tensions... oh dear, the witch is so evil! let me give some examples....". In other words: tedium. Card's actual content might have been worth a short story, but it definitely does not support a novel.

Second, it's Orson Scott Card. Now, I loved Ender's Game as much as everyone else, but I was a kid when I read it. This adult taste of Card left a bad taste in my mouth, and leaves me afraid to ever reread Ender's Game. He seems to spend the entire novel working out his own issues with religion and with sex, and he had some serious undertones of anti-feminism, gender essentialism and homophobia. Which grated. Two pages didn't go by where I wasn't vaguely disturbed by an implication in the text. If the disturbing bits hadn't suffused the entire story, I'd be more willing to chalk it up to him trying to capture medieval opinion (a quite modern-conservative-ly flavored medieval opinion); as it is, these moments definitely comes through as Card being oblivious, scornful, or downright vindictive toward some subset of his (potential) audience.

Enchantment left a bad taste in my mouth, and what plot it did have wasn't very clever. I think I'm done with this author. show less