Book Review #12

Book: Night Dance by Suzanne Weyn
Age-range: 10 and up
Rating: 8 out of 10

This is another book in the Once Upon a Time series.  I've noticed something about this particular series: all the books are short.  I think they must put a page limit or word limit on the three women who write these books.  Because of the shortness of the stories some parts of the stories feel rushed, no matter what book it is.  I think each of the books I read in this series could easily be expanded another 100 pages without being too long.

Anyway, on with the review!  It's no secret that my favorite fairy tales is The Twelve Dancing Princesses.  There are very few re-tellings of this particular tale, so when I find them I usually get excited.  This one combined two of my favorite things: The Twelve Dancing Princess tale and the King Arthur legend.  In the first few chapters I was a little wary of this combination, but the pieces came together nicely.  Again, I wish parts of the story had been expanded.

This seems as good a time as any to plug one of my favorite websites SurLaLune Fairy Tales (surlalunefairytales.com).  It's run by a women as obsessed with fairy tales as me, if not moreso since she doesn't discriminate.  The website has a handy-dandy feature where you can click on your favorite fairy tale and then click on a link that tells you all the modern re-tellings (that Heidi Anne Heiner knows of) about that particular tale! Pretty awesome.  She also has a blog that is really good, but focuses on all things fairy tale, not just books.  There are a lot of books I never would have found without her help and it's nice to have a place where you can read so many tales online.  Anyway, go and see it for yourself!