Just finished Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier (my review of another book by her- http://diederek.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html). Loved it! Again, it was a wonderful modern retelling of a classic fairytale- this one was more focused on a single story, The Six Swans. This one took place in Ireland way back whenever, and like in Wildwood Dancing, Marillier did a great job of embellishing the setting and making the place truly as interesting as the characters themselves. The whole castle within a spirited forest thing blew away my dreams. And I found the ritual/religion of the time/place to be awesome, and almost like Shinto. Also, I haven't read many books where there are 7+ who aren't entirely flat characters, but she did a great job of showing the individuality of Sorcha, her 6 brothers, her love, her friends, and her enemies (who did a great job of pissing me the fuck off!)
But yo, when I was a kid, I freakin' hated books where the main character didn't fall in love and get married in the end. It's not that I didn't value the adventure and characters and magic, I loved all of that most of all. I just feel like a good love story is the icing on the cake. Cake is great, I love it and could eat it all day even without icing but icing just makes it perfect you know? (Did I really just explain a cliche?) My point is, I think this is the only book I've ever read, where there was romance, and it was good and all, but it was the least of my worries, and I feel like the book would have still had icing without it. I mean, I'm normally so uninterested in sibling love I was almost unwilling to read this book (I mainly did because of the author and because it was this months book for the new fantasy book club I joined on goodreads). But the love between Sorcha and her brothers was so wonderful and deep, that I literally shouted out loud "What the HELL? WHY?" during the dramatic part at the end. Great jawb Marillier, you've shown that sometimes great sibling love can rival great lovey dovey love.
So yeah, I'd definitely read more books by this lady.
By the way, I'm surprised/disappointed by how long it took me to read this. I got appendicitis on April 11th so I've had PLENTY of time to do SHIT. Literally, nothing. The first week was excusable- there was a lot of surgery/sleep/being heavily drugged/fevers/throwing up/solely focusing on recovery (which hasn't gone so well), But I admit that much of my time has been spent watching TV or surfing the web. I guess I just haven't had a lot of focus. So yeah, not much to show for all this time off of work (not to mention I'm taking the term off). I'll get better.
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