The Night Dance: A Retelling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses"

This was an interesting retelling of the Grimm Brothers' The Twelve Dancing Princesses, which took the original fairy tale and combined it with Arthurian legend, making the boy who figures out the mystery behind the girls' worn out shoes one of Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. In this story, the girls are the daughter of a self-made Count, who met their mother near a lake in the forest. The woman turns out to be Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake, and Arthur's aunt. She's trapped in the lake by Morgan Le Fay, causing Ethan, the husband, to think she left him. This makes him extremely overprotective of his daughters, whom he raises in a walled-in manor house.

I liked how the author switched the viewpoint of the narrator throughout, show more although it did get kind of clunky in some spots. Rowena (the youngest daughter) and Bevidere (the Knight) were my favorites, though. I've always had a problem with the lack of feeling that the sisters have for the men they end up tricking, causing them to lose their lives, and was glad that Weyn only had two men attempt it (view spoiler). I'm actually using this fairy tale as one of the stories I'm going to tell for my Storytelling class in Grad school, and have read many MANY versions of this story in preparation. This was definitely one of the more interesting ones. show less

I still haven't gotten around to reading the actual "Twelve Dancing Princesses" fairy tale. One of my favorite books, [b:Wildwood Dancing|13929|Wildwood Dancing (Wildwood, #1)|Juliet Marillier|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1236781023s/13929.jpg|2024857], is based on this tale. So after reading this and that, I've been able to figure out a bit more of the tale just by comparing common elements.

The nice surprise of this book is that the author mixed Arthurian legend in with this tale.

One part of the plot was sketchy. The father held a contest to have young men spend the night practically in the sisters' bedroom to find out how they were escaping at night, even though he was concerned about the men making advances on the girls. The show more winner of the contest got to choose one of the sisters to marry. Why wouldn't the father himself just spend the night in the bedroom and figure it out? Or have one of his female servants do it? But that might have been from the original fairy tale itself and not the fault of this author. Guess I'll have to read it to find out.

The ending of Night Dance made me really happy. And that's one of the main reasons I read fairy tales/retellings. show less

I've enjoyed each book I've read so far in the "Once Upon A Time" series of reworked fairy tales. I enjoyed "The Night Dance" as well but it wasn't at all what I had hoped for. I have appreciated the new ideas and plot twists in each story and delighted in seeing how each story changed, and (in some cases) improved the fairy tales I knew. The story of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" doesn't completely work when mixed with characters from Arthurian tales of the Knights of the Round Table. "The Night Dance" feels like two disjointed and separate tales being mashed together. The actual book still read quickly and when I wasn't puzzled by what was happening, I enjoyed the sisters and I loved the part where the suitors had to figure out how show more the sisters were ruining their slippers every night. I love magical stories but I feel like the "Arthur" magic is different in feel from fairy tale magic. Overall the book was enjoyable for what it was but it would have made more sense for the author to have written two different "Once Upon A Time" books....one based on Arthur and the other on Twelve Dancing Princesses. show less

It sounded wonderful, but I did not really connect with any of the characters. The romance between the youngest daughter (who is the leading lady) Rowena and Sir Bedivere (the remaining of King Arthur's knights) did not really sparkle or feel believable. I wish there had been a little more about the underground dancing - a little more mystery, but everything was pretty much explained away right then and there.

I love retellings of fairy stories; Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, Ellen Kushner, Jane Yolen – all of these and more have done wonderful things with the concept. This, sadly, is so badly written that all that can be said of it is that apparently it's true that anyone can get a novel published nowadays.

Very adventurous story. It was interesting seeing that the Knight of the round table were tied into this story.

read this review and others at http://readingforsanity.blogspot.com/2008/11/night-dance-once-upon-time-series.h...