Spindle's End: A Review
Spindle’s End was an excellent read. As usual, McKinley took a fairytale I was familiar with, in this case, Sleeping Beauty, and inspired it with fresh energy.
McKinley’s very real characters told strong stories about friendship, courage, and perseverance. The heroines were all both flawed and eminently likable. The villain, Pernicia, was one of the best bad guys I’ve read in a long time. I very much enjoyed that the story switched protagonists, beginning with the fairy, Katriona, who rescues the princess on her name day, and then changing to Rosie, the princess, when she’s old enough to be an interesting lead character.
As with her other works which I’ve read, she uses an omniscient narrator flawlessly. SE was less dreamy in feeling than either Deerskin or the Damar books. There were numerous times while reading SE that I simply had to laugh out loud (truly) because of some of the observations made by the narrator, who was nevertheless very unobtrusive.
More so than in her other works, McKinley also made use of beast speech, not that there were talking animals, but that there were certain fairies (and one special human) who could hear the animals speech with each other. That added a lot of color and texture to the narrative.
The plot was full of the proverbial twists. The ending of SE surprised me. A lot. And yet, it felt very right.
McKinley’s very real characters told strong stories about friendship, courage, and perseverance. The heroines were all both flawed and eminently likable. The villain, Pernicia, was one of the best bad guys I’ve read in a long time. I very much enjoyed that the story switched protagonists, beginning with the fairy, Katriona, who rescues the princess on her name day, and then changing to Rosie, the princess, when she’s old enough to be an interesting lead character.
As with her other works which I’ve read, she uses an omniscient narrator flawlessly. SE was less dreamy in feeling than either Deerskin or the Damar books. There were numerous times while reading SE that I simply had to laugh out loud (truly) because of some of the observations made by the narrator, who was nevertheless very unobtrusive.
More so than in her other works, McKinley also made use of beast speech, not that there were talking animals, but that there were certain fairies (and one special human) who could hear the animals speech with each other. That added a lot of color and texture to the narrative.
The plot was full of the proverbial twists. The ending of SE surprised me. A lot. And yet, it felt very right.