Reading orson scott card and liking it is as confusing as they said it would be.

Good, but I would say it falls short from the rest of his body of work. I find myself rather disappointed to be sure. I would if it comes with trying to 'update' or 'retell' a fable that has been rewritten endlessly through the ages.

My suggestion would have been to firstly choose other character names. I found them to be the most distracting element overall. If one's names don't seem to 'fit' the person/character I feel like they are 'fictional' and I have a difficult time investing myself into the world. I want to be drawn in- to feel myself lost and no longer realize that I am, in fact, reading.

Incredibly clever premise, good execution, fairly unlikable characters. This was an enjoyable read, but I don't see myself every doing a re-read. If you like a good fractured fairy tale, you'll probably enjoy this artful version of Sleeping Beauty. 3.5 stars

This book was worth reading. There were elements I loved - the slight skewing of fairy tale, and the contrast between the modern world and the ancient world makes for unlimited writing fodder. As always, Card's use of enchantment and sorcery is charming. The anthropologist in me loved the discovery of ancient language and early writing. The story was definitely good.

What I didn't like is that in many areas it read like a romance novel. The are sections of the book where the constant inner dialog of the angst of love was quite wearisome. She despises me... Can I ever love him... blah, blah, blah. It got old fast. It's why I don't read romances.

Again, perhaps the editor should have been more involved. The novel would be better with some judicious cuts. But still, worth the read.

It must be admitted from the start that this book has a lot of plot holes. However, I enjoyed it. The slow burn romance was sweet, and I appreciated the fantasy and how Card incorporated Russian fairy tales and history into the story. There was something nostalgic about reading a book from the 90s, and it reminded me that one of my favorite movies when I was a kid was “The Kid in King Arthur’s Court”. In summary, this book won’t be for everyone, but it kept me entertained on some very long plane rides. Although the ending was a little TOO Deus Ex Machina, even for a fairy tale…..

This one would be a 3.5 for me (curse you Goodreads for not allowing fractional ratings). I don't know enough about Russian folk tales or Slavic culture to be able to speak to the accuracy of those elements of the story, but the author was able to craft a world that drew me in as a reader. I wasn't the biggest fan of the ending as it seemed a little too easy to me, and a little too reliant on deus ex machina (but this is a fairy tale after all, so I don't know what I expected). I thought the character development was nice and that overall it was a nice retelling of a familiar story.

Vážně naprosto okouzlující a úžasné! Zápletka, kterou jsem snad ani nemohla čekat, napětí a nebezpečí, zrada, přátelství a humorné okamžiky. Trocha nepřeslazené romantiky. Krásná zamyšlení nad různými tématy, ty argumentace se mi opravdu líbily.
Fakt se mi líbí, když se fantazie člověka neomezuje a překročí zase o kousíček dál ony pomyslné hranice, v jejichž území se povětšinou držíme. V rámci tohoto příběhu se to podařilo a je to krásně přehledné, není to žádný šílený výbuch. Zatím jsem totiž nečetla knihu, která by byla zároveň současnou i historickou fantasy, a ten příběh je tak krásně napsaný...

At first I was confused by the story of a Ukranian boy converting to Judaism and how it would deal with fairy tales. As soon as the real story started to take place, I was hooked. It was so interesting to read a fairy tale written by Scott Card. It's very nitty-gritty, not so glossed over as most fairy tales, and very compelling. It was such a disfuntional love story that it was so much more true and all the better in the end.

This one's hard for me because every single time I look at the title, I hear this in my mind and it gets tiresome after awhile.
Gabe knows what I'm talking about.
Kat probably does, too, come to think of it.

March 12:
I've made it to the halfway mark.
There's a chance this gets better, there's a chance that all the characters stop being little puppet people cut outs, there's a chance everything stops sounding so confused - is it light-hearted silliness? Is it fairy tale fantasy? Is it intellectual historical fiction? Is it a brilliant look into storytelling and how revisionist history can be traced back to early Christianity, the move to written words over an oral knowledge-base, and how regardless of another culture's take on a tale, the essence of the tale remains the same as does its purpose? Can it be all at the same time? (Answer: no, not successfully, not in this case)

So, yeah, there's a chance this completely turns around but at this point, I hate this book so much that I do not want to take that chance. My one star reflects the fact that this book is so loathesome to me that I cannot even slog through the next half to see where it goes (I have a good inkling, though, and it's been fairly predictable, though ridiculous, thus far, so I suspect my inkling is close enough to what I'd find if I continued to seethe while listening to this)

My biggest (of many) peeve: Ivan's arrogance. It's overwhelming and oppressive. I mean, come on, he's a supposed scholar (of sorts) all entrenched in olden tymes Russia and when he gets a chance to go see what he's studied, first hand, he ARGUES with the people living in that culture about their culture! Holy hell on a stick, who does that? Why does this guy make assumptions about how this place works when he can clearly see he was wrong about how he thought this place worked? Why does he argue and present his superior contemporary logic to anyone and everyone? I cannot get over his belief that his university education gave him more insight about the time period than being in the actual time period. PS: thank goodness he chose to study proto-Cyrillic languages in college! You know what really irked me? When he decided the kingdomtown of Tyna was to be subsumed by a larger power because he had never heard of it! Because there's no way information from 1,000 years ago could simply not make it through to the modern day. And everything that is to be known about history is already known and there are no new discoveries. Ever. So of course this towndom was completely taken over in a small, non-mentionable fashion. Had it not, had it been able to remain a Christian town among the rest of the heathens, had it done anything of note, Ivan would have read about it in a history textbook. But don't worry, he can change all that!
And again, maybe this all changes in the second half, maybe Ivan realizes he's an asshole who doesn't know what he doesn't know, but I'm not willing to go there and find out because I worry I'll stab my own ears out if I have to listen to this a minute more.

Katerina.
Never mind her. She's dumb. She can only have power if she's married, despite what her father tries to make her think. And she makes no sense, ever, with her arguing about one thing then about the opposite and then about what Ivan thinks of her. What? Yes. Moving on.

Esther.
Yay, Esther. I loved her in the beginning. I don't love her anymore.

Baba Yaga.
I'll take the revisionist history fairy tales of this witch over the cartoonish version of her in this story.

Everything else.
Just...no.

I'm done.

A Russian Sleeping Beauty retelling, with a modern-day (well, 1990s) protagonist. This odd combo works a good bit of the time, but falls on its face along the way at key moments. The snail's pace of the story was undeniably frustrating, as was the perpetual miscommunication between the two leads, but the writng style was enjoyable enough for me to persevere. Not one of Card's best, but probably worth a read if you like Russian fairy tales and his other works.

I wrote the above and then was remembering how much the chapters from Baba Yaga's perspective bothered me because their tone was so Disney villainish and jarring, and how several plot threads were dropped. And the characters are actually kind of rubbish, the more I think about them. Keeping this at 3 stars, but barely.

3,5/5
Lo mejor:
- La mezcla interesantísima entre los estudios del folclore, lenguas y cuentos antiguos de Ucrania que estudia el personaje principal y la trama mágica en la que se ve envuelto.
- El atrevimiento de unir un contexto de realismo muy mundano con un contexto de la fantasía más tradicional. Y todo ello salpicado de reflexiones sobre judaísmo y cristianismo, que influyen en ambos contextos a todos los personajes.
- Los personajes tienen procesos de pensamiento y de actuación creíbles.
Lo peor:
- A veces los planes de actuación dan vueltas y vueltas sobre sí mismos y entorpecen el fluir de la trama. Sobran al menos 40 páginas por culpa de estas cosas. O podrían haberse cambiado por más escenas interesantes.
- Que los capítulos de Baba Yaga sean tan esporádicos y breves. Es un personaje interesante en sí mismo por su leyenda, pero además Scott Card lo trabaja maravillosamente en el libro en sí, ¿por qué no lo aprovechó más?

This one was given to me by a long-time family friend (by long-time, I mean: my dad roomed with him after college, and he was my dad's best man), who is also an OSC friend, so I was expecting great things--and my expectations were definitely fulfilled!

The mixture of fairy tale and reality, with subtle plays on the readers' expectations of what a fairy tale entails was brilliant, as was the time-dichotomy! The distinctness between the customs & expectations of the people of both times was extraordinarily well done--something I'm not surprised by, because it's Card, but something I wish more people would take care with in historical-ish fiction. :)

Okay, but the DIALOGUE. I can't even with Card's dialogue. He is SO BRILLIANT.

And I thought he handled the Catholic-Jewish dichotomy pretty well, considering that he isn't either one, but I do think his Mormonism came through more in this book than any of his others, with his use of "gods". Or maybe that was just a nod to mythology? Not sure. Anyway--it didn't bother me at all, but it might others. :)

The romance was adorable, and extraordinarily well done, although I will note that there were a couple of suggestive bits (not all that graphic) and a bedroom scene (not graphic...but sort of described. Not super inappropriate, but not something I'd recommend for younger teens.) In both cases, the couple was married. :) There's also some nakedness, handled matter-of-factly, and other such things.

I liked it a LOT, but I didn't prefer the suggestive stuff, so I think I'll give it 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4 for GR)