I believe Germany has a region called Westfalen. (Nordrhein-Westfalen auf Deutsch; North Rhine-Westphalia in English), so that's probably where that's from.
Dumb question: Rose is the oldest of the twelve princesses of Westfalin. She and her twelve younger sisters. If she's the oldest of twelve, how does she have twelve younger sisters? Wouldn't she have eleven? (I just got off work. My math is probably faulty.)
I love fairy tale re-dos, though. I need to get more.
Things I didn’t like: it always bothers me a little bit when an author co-opts real geography and gives in a slightly different-sounding name. Espana for Spain. Breton for Britain. Etc. And Westfalin was clearly Germany, or at the very least Germanic. If you’re going for a fantasy world, make up your own country names and geography and religion. If you’re placing your fairy tale retelling in a real time and place, then use the real names. I don’t like the wishy-washy, can’t make up her mind version of places.
I'm amused that this is a pet peeve of yours, because I actually tend to like it quite a bit when authors present just-alternative-enough versions of the world we have. It's like reading AU historical fiction, or a peek into a parallel universe or something.
Just to clarify--I like alt.history novels that subtly play with our own past to create something fascinating. I just don't like it when it's less a deliberate choice that informs the movement of the plot, and more a lazy writing decision to avoid having to worldbuild.
Genuinely good alternate history requires a serious amount of worldbuilding, as much as any decent fantasy novel. But naming your countries after real places but not actually doing anything with them is just sort of a cop-out, to my mind.
Good clarification -- I understand what you mean now, and I agree. For instance, just because the setting of Megan Whalen Turner's Thief books is based on Greece doesn't mean she hasn't had to do a lot of worldbuilding to set up the unique political context and so on. Plus, she's chosen more of a Renaissance Greece than the default of ancient Greece which makes it doubly interesting and fresh (though it totally threw me off at first -- watches? Guns?).
Wildwood Dancing was one of my favorite books that I read last year. I'm still not quite over it. I'm excited for the sequel/companion that's out now, but I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback.
Recommend Robin McKinley's take on the story; it's a short story in her collection Door in the Hedge. She's also got a great version of the Frog Prince in there (that one's always annoyed the heck out of me, usually). I'll look into these, I'd love some retellings of this particular fairy tale!
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Dumb question: Rose is the oldest of the twelve princesses of Westfalin. She and her twelve younger sisters. If she's the oldest of twelve, how does she have twelve younger sisters? Wouldn't she have eleven? (I just got off work. My math is probably faulty.)
I love fairy tale re-dos, though. I need to get more.
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I assumed that Westfalin was in some way Germanic. I still don't like the pseudo-real country usage, though.
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I'm amused that this is a pet peeve of yours, because I actually tend to like it quite a bit when authors present just-alternative-enough versions of the world we have. It's like reading AU historical fiction, or a peek into a parallel universe or something.
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Genuinely good alternate history requires a serious amount of worldbuilding, as much as any decent fantasy novel. But naming your countries after real places but not actually doing anything with them is just sort of a cop-out, to my mind.
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