me and orson take on judaism and feminist analysis! what could go wrong

Tracy, please don't hate me. I tried really hard to like this book, especially since you like it so much, but I just couldn't get into it. I think I have something against Orson Scott Card. This is about the 3rd book of his that I've started and couldn't finish. Ender's Game was one of those, but I'm going to dig deep and get through it eventually since everyone loves it. I got in about 150 pages on this one, and just couldn't keep going. Am I reading too much lately that I'm just getting too picky?

This was a great retelling of Sleeping Beauty. I love anything that has to do with Russia so that was an added bonus! When I was learning Russian my teacher told me about Baba Yaga (this scary witch woman from old Russian folk tales) and she is in this book as a character so that was pretty interesting.

Also, there are a lot of times I was pissed at Katarina for the shit she put Ivan through. If I were him I would've just kicked her in the shin and freaking booked it back to the future. Nevertheless, I still liked the book and would recommend it to most people. There's a lot of crude jokes in it (which I though was funny considering I assumed(wrongly) that this was an Ender's Game-type young adult book of Card's) but you can overlook most of them.

Audiobook caveats: I dozed off a couple times during the Baba Yaga sections of the book-->The woman reading her sections was good at the narrative voice and the witch but her voice as the bear was ridiculous. It sounded like what my mom would sound like if she tried to talk like a bear...ridiculous.

I just finished rereading Orson Scott Card's Enchantment. I probably read it 20 years ago. I remembered the vague outline of the story, and I remember that I thought it was amazing. However, it was so much better than I remembered. I love this book full of magic, adventure, and romance. I love that it is based around Ukrainian and Russian fairy tales. I love that it's about time travel. The characters are fantastic.

This one is SO good.

It really isn't fair to compare a tractor with a thoroughbred. Have you ever seen one of those show horses up close, its hide shining like the polished mahogany table in your grandmother's formal dining room, their faces chiseled and massive, their impossibly long, sinewed legs dancing with a visibly checked wild power? Even if you aren't a horse person, the beauty of these beasts takes your breath away. Turn, then, to the tractor hulking in the dust. Tractors have grown larger than life, shadowing the farmers who ride them, but have no more personality than a hoe or a pitchfork, and less, even, than some pitchforks I have known. They are efficient machines, and they get the job done.

But their poetry is lacking.

Thus with Enchantment. The story is tight, not a cog out of place. The languages are well researched, historical anachronisms never glared out at me from the page, and the myths are cleverly concealed and then revealed. But against the likes of Angela Carter, Bill Willingham, Lev Grossman, Jane Yolen, and yes, Neil Gaiman, Scott-Card's fairy tale lacks poetry. There's little grace here, and while he perfectly executed the story, and masterfully portrayed his characters, I had to wonder whether he actually liked doing it all that much.

DNF
A fairy tale revise/retelling from a boys POV.
Maybe I would loved this more if it didn’t lean so hard into the religious aspect.

I think the modern references might not make sense for future readers. Like I know what TBCY is- but maybe younger readers will not.

When the dialogue really started rolling it was pretty interesting...but it couldn’t hold my attention in the inbtwn parts.

The TBR pile is too long to feel guilty when a book doesn’t feel interesting.

(2.5 stars)

I first read this shortly after it was published. Unlike most other OSC books, I had not reread it . . . until now.

The problem is, that even though it is a marvelously written book, and I usually enjoy retellings/retoolings of old fairy tales, I find Enchantment very disturbing.

I know perfectly well why Ivan is Jewish: in 1970s Russia, it was certainly the easiest way to end up a refusenik! And what other non-Christian would make any sense in pre-1000 Russia? I get all of that. It makes perfect sense in the book's context.

But it means that I am meant to root for Ivan's marriage to Katerina, and against poor Ruthie. To root for a marriage that makes all his children non-Jews, completely lost to the Jewish people. (Not to mention be ok with his conversion to Christianity.)

Somehow, I can't imagine OSC ever making a character Mormon as a plot point.

So on the one hand, I would give this book 4 stars; and on the other point, I would give it 1. My actual rating is a compromise.

I like Orson Scott Card's ability to tell a story. He is good at it, so I liked the basic story of this book. The adult content within this book made me think that he was high on Viagra, at the time of writing this; it made me squirm, and I was disgusted. I also hate the language. Why did he half to go around and write about such vulgar jokes about the human body, and the language within every chapter of this book? Why in the world does anyone need to do that? It just makes them look like they have a dirty mind and a foul mouth.

Now, the question is why did I keep reading this particular book? Like I said, I like the story, take out the vulgarity, sexual content, foul language, have everyone clothed, then this fairytale story would be fantastic.

I find it ironic that Orson Scott Chard would say this about a book called He's just not that into you The truth about Men; Oscar Depression:

"....this book is secretly for single men. It tells them how to be a decent human being! How to treat women fairly, by not treating them unfairly; how to show them you love them, that you want them to be happy.It's really the syllabus for Male Adulthood 101. Because there are also a lot of lonely men out there who don't understand why women don't fall in love with them.Men: Read this book, and then don't do anything these jerks do. Become the man of a good woman's dreams.Then, as the total number of thoughtful, caring men rises, more women will find the mate they long for.The one big mistake in this book is that they treat men as a "given" -- as if men can't change.But we can. I had my years as a jerk of a single guy, who called -- or didn't -- without any relationship to what I said I would do. But then I grew up. Suddenly, at the ripe old age of 24, I realized that I didn't like the dating game. I didn't like pursuing women till I got them and then wondering what in the world to do with them. I was ready to be a grownup.So I went over to see the smartest, most independent, and -- for me, at least -- best woman I ever dated, whom I had broken up with about six months before, and I ...Proposed to her.Yep. Because I knew that she would have to have some kind of proof that I had changed, and this time I was serious. She made me wait four-and-a-half months for an answer. And during the interim, she didn't exactly roll out the red carpet for me. All was not instantly forgiven.But by the time we got married, I was well on the way to being the man she deserved -- instead of the man I used to be.

Sorry to say but what is written in this book, it still looks like he has somethings to learn. So do I, that is why we are hear to learn and grow. One thing I have learned is that I will not be reading anything more of his books, unless it is Ender's Game. I just don't want to be in company of any man, who would treat me like dirt, talk about vulgar stuff, and poke fun of the human body of any sex; I hate it just as much when women do the same thing.

Synopsis:

Enchantment is the story of a Ukraine-born, American grad student who finds himself transported to the ninth century to play the prince in a Russian version of Sleeping Beauty. Early in the story, he muses that in a French or English retelling of the tale, the prince and princess would live happily ever after. But, "only a fool would want to live through the Russian version of any fairy tale."

Although his fears turn out to be warranted, as he and his cursed princess contend with the diabolical witch Baba Yaga--easily Russia's best pre-Khrushchev villain--to save the princess's kingdom, Enchantment is ultimately a sweet story. Mixing magic and modernity, the acclaimed Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game) has woven threads of history, religion, and myth together into a convincing, time-hopping tale that is part love story, part adventure. Enchantment's heroes, "Prince" Ivan and Princess Katerina, must deal with cross-cultural mores, ancient gods, treacherous kinsmen (and fianceés), and ultimately Baba Yaga herself.

A mix between sleeping beauty and a connect yankee in king Arthurs court. Very Russian and Jewish with a large scholarly viewpoint.

Highly entertaining but also very intellectually satisfying for a modern adult fantasy novel.
I loved the linguistic and dialect details throughout and the use of different lore I wasn't as familiar with.

Wonderful read, full of anticipation throughout and completely unpredictable

Sleeping Beauty is awakened not by Prince Charming, but a Jewish-American graduate student with a penchant for Slavic languages and long distance running. Ivan Smetski returns to his childhood home of Ukraine for some research and relaxation. While on a run, he seeks out a meadow in a forest he once came upon as a child. To his surprise, the woman he saw lying asleep on a pedestal all those years ago was not a figment of his imagination. After defeating a bear that guards "sleeping beauty," Ivan kisses her and she awakens. From there on out, the looming threat of a wicked witch forces Ivan and Princess Katerina to cross between the 1990s and the 9th Century. Their hope is to defeat the witch and bring safety to Katerina’s village, but stating that their task is difficult is an understatement -- let's just say that Ivan and Katerina don’t exactly hit it off when she awakens from his kiss.

I can’t say that all fantasy fiction is for me, but this book can be credited with my newfound appreciation for the genre. What drew me to the novel was Card’s ability to merge modern, non-fantastical elements with fantasy themes. He presents both a scholarly dialogue on Russian fairytales from Ivan’s perspective as a graduate student, and seamlessly blends this into the storyline taking place within Katerina’s world. This balance between "real" and "fantasy" keeps the novel from being too much for my taste. Clever and sarcastic dialogue also adds to the appeal making the book a pretty funny read.