Wildwood Dancing | Juliet Marillier | Transylvanian Fairytale

Wildwood Dancing | Juliet Marillier | Surprisingly Original!

books:

Wildwood Dancing

	Wildwood Dancing Juliet Marillier Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2008 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 30 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Transylvanian Fairytale

This book is an enchanting blend of fairytale and the struggle of everyday life. Five sisters are forced to fend for themselves when their father leaves them for the winter. Rather than getting help from their cousin, Jena and her sisters find themselves trapped under Cezar's tyrannical demands. But not everything is terrible for the five girls. Unknown to others, every full moon provides them with an escape to an enchanted world of fairies, nymphs, dwarves, and dancing. But even that is threatened when the Night People begin to attend the festivities, and it is left up to Jena (and her friend, the frog Gogu) to protect her sisters in both worlds.

Brimming with intrigue, adventure, and romance, you'll quickly find yourself absorbed in Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing.

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Surprisingly Original!

I thought I'd read every story plot involving vampires and faeries, but this was very original and new. You really get involved in the sisters' world, and I didn't want it to end. If you like faerie and/or vampires, you should be enchanted with this. I especially liked the dictionary and pronunciation guide for the Romanian words and names. It helped with the whole flavor of the book. I'd like to see more. Sequel, please!

Superb Young Adult story

A young adult fantasy, Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier is quite simply, delicious. It is part historical fiction, part romance, part mystery, part fantasy and completely magical. The prose is beautiful, the plot is captivating and the characters are drawn so precisely that your imagination is like a camera capturing the essence of the author's ideas.

Five curious and adventurous sisters live in a drafty old castle (Piscul Dracului) in Transylvania. The castle is on the edge of mysterious and haunted woodlands. One (full moon the sisters open a portal between their world and the haunted wood. And each month, for many years, they dress in their best gowns and dance with their woodland friends all night, only to stagger home before sunrise, tired and happy and eager for their next visit.

Jenica is 16 and because of her father's illness, she takes on the responsibility for the family business and her sisters. Jenica's best friend is her pet frog, Gogu (she takes him everywhere). The winter is particularly harsh and Jenica struggles to keep her family fed. But her overbearing, spiteful and power-hungry cousin, Cezar, takes control of the household and threatens not only the family, but their beloved woodland. Life is already difficult enough, but Tatiana (another sister) falls in love with one of the feared Night People.

Jenica will have to travel between worlds to save her sister, her family and business, and to learn the years-old secrets of family betrayal that may have even greater consequences than they all ready have had.

Armchair Interviews says: A must read! The best young adult book I've read in the past year.

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Enjoyable

This beautiful story of five sisters, who sojourn into the Transylvanian enchanted woods, is pure fairy tale magic. Indeed, most of the concepts are "borrowed" from well known fairy tale stories,such as, 5 (12?) girls going through a secret door to an enchanted forest and dancing all night, a frog that turns into a man and an old witch stirring trouble. Indeed, as this book is directed at "young adults", it has some harry potteryien magic surrounding it, while staying firmly devoted to the classical (Grimm Brothers) lessons of love, loyalty, family and magic.
However, I must admit, the idea of a "young adult" being influenced to believe that it is romantic to starve oneself almost to death because of love, is disturbing to say the least. Not to mention the overt domestic violence, and ideas of femininity as submissive that are prevalent throughout the book. I do recognize that the story is contextualized to the 15-16th century Romania, yet when presented in fairy-tale form it does adhere to the classic role these stories originally played, to teach the listener (reader) an important lesson.
Nonetheless, I would recommend this book to anyone wishing to depart reality for a while and immerse themselves in a thoroughly compelling read that is engrossing form start to finish. Suspend reality for a while (and feminist agenda's) and enjoy!

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An "Okay" Read

While I really did enjoy Marillier's Daughter of the Forest, I found this book (just like her Son of the Shadows one) rather lacking. For one, it had almost the same plotline as her Son of the Shadows book; the elder sister falls in love with someone she isn't supposed to, they endure many hardships and ultimately end up being together, blah blah blah. When I first got the "hint" of this being part of the plotline, I almost groaned aloud--"again?!" Luckily, the book did get better as it went on, though I found that the only interesting person in the whole book to be Cezar. Gogu, who ends up being Jenica's beloved, was a thoroughly boring, typical "princely" character who just got on my nerves. Sorrow, the elder sister's beloved, also turns out to be rather monotonous and frustrating to read about. Furthermore, the author's casual dismissal of Cezar is aggravating. He leaves, unloved by all, an almost inhuman character who "got what he deserved"; although he IS the sexist villain, he is the most original character in the whole book. I was also disappointed that Marillier outlined the faerie realm so shallowly--she barely skimmed the surface of what she could have done. Also, the book seemed to be too "right vs wrong"; just because it's a young adult book doesn't mean that it needs to be so shallow.

However, I did find that the plotline was intriguing. I've always enjoyed reading "faerie-tale"-style books, and this was not, by far, the worst faerie-based book I've read. I recommend this to those that feel like delving a little into light-hearted fantasy which never does get too serious.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6

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