I have been struggling lately with books – just feel like I keep starting novels that aren’t quite hitting the spot. They aren’t bad or anything (I think) but they aren’t pulling me in or the tone is slightly off. I have had this one on my Kindle for a few months now and wasn’t entirely sure what to expect but it worked out for me.
Marissa Meyer has been a bit hit or miss for me – I mostly enjoyed The Lunar Chronicles (especially Cinder). It’s been a while since I read them but vaguely feel like I thought she didn’t quite stick the landing but it worked enough. I was very disappointed with her superhero trilogy, Renegades – it’s started strong but it didn’t deliver on what it promised, and something that had started out as a potential subversive exploration of concepts of good and evil ended up reaffirming them.
But … with my current semi-reading slump, I figured why not add one more novel to the my current reads, and since I do love a fairy tale retelling, thought I would give this one a chance.
And, it worked! This novel mixes the idea of the Great Hunt with the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale and a pantheon of gods – it’s funny, having grown up on Grimm’s fairy tales I now feel like I have to distinguish between more generic fairy tales/folk tales and “more influenced by Irish myth and fae” kind of fairy tale stories and the great hunt feels more like the second while Rumpelstiltskin feels solidly in the first for me.
Serilda loves to weave and tell stories, though it hasn’t always worked out that well for her, making her stand out negatively in their village. Her father is down to earth and the only fantastical story he has ever told is about how he once saved a god and made a wish, leading to Serilda’s birth and her being marked by the god of stories and lies, fate and fortune.
Everyone knows to be in doors on the full moon to hide from the monthly great hunt, but one night, Serilda is drawn outside and ends up meeting the Erlking, somehow spinning a tale that she can weave straw into gold to explain herself to him. A month later, he comes back to take her back to his castle and test her, where she meets the “poltergeist,” Gild, who actually can do what she claimed to be able to do, and offers to help – for a price.
The story gets a bit dark as the attention of the Erlking brings consequences on Serilda’s loved ones in his efforts to control her. As a natural story teller, she also loves to hear and discovers stories, and finds herself on a mission to discover the truth behind the Elderking’s castle and what he wants from her.
Overall, I quite enjoyed how Meyer wove these stories together – while I predicted some of the plot lines and story elements early in, in other cases, it wasn’t until a few pages before the reveal that I guessed where she was going, which was a pleasant surprise. The biggest flaw is honestly the length – instead of a duology of over 900 pages, I think this story would have been better served as one novel because as much as I enjoyed the story and wanted to see where it was going, there were also points that felt a bit repetitive/dragged. I have rounded up a 3.5 to 4 but honestly, I think I am being generous because semi-reading slump, and rounding down to 3 might be more fair because of the parts that dragged but I was just glad to be pulled into a story.