I really enjoy reading this, though I can't say there's much that's objectively good about these stories. They're poorly paced and a little senseless, and sometimes even stupid. Bad guys are defeated too easily and quickly and all of the endings feel anti-climatic. Each story could be summed up as "this girl was really hot and beautiful, and she looked at this guy, who was also hot and beautiful, and the evil went up in smoke, and then there was a wedding."

However, because it's Robin McKinley, the writing has a really atmospheric old-world quality that you can't really find anywhere else. There's also a glimmer of McKinley's brilliance here (particularly in the depiction of Alora and Gilvan's relationship in the first story) that hints at what makes The Blue Sword and Hero and the Crown so great. And even though the romances were slightly gimmicky, I still enjoyed them for what they were, because I personally like the tropes McKinley plays with in her books. So I'd definitely recommend this to die-hard McKinley fans, especially fans of her older work (if they haven't already read this), but would hesitate to give it to someone who only knows YA fantasy from the last 10-15 years.

I needed to read a book published in the year I was born for a book bingo. This book was originally published in 1981. It contains four short fairy tales, two original and two retellings. The retellings were stories I was vaguely familiar with (The Frog Prince and The Twelve Dancing Princesses) and I’m not quite sure how they varied from the originals. The other two stories were about a fairy realm where missing children disappear to and a golden hind (which I’m assuming is some sort of deer type animal) who is being hunted by a king and then his children.

All of the stories were interesting but very wordy. I tried to read the Twelve Dancing Princesses aloud to my daughter and I found myself having to re-read a lot of the sentences to make sure I was putting the inflections in the correct locations. The sentences were long and winded.

I guess I enjoyed this book but nothing really stood out to me. The two new stories were slightly unrememberable and the retellings didn’t excite me.

I give this book 3 stars and it’s clean for younger readers. Albeit it slightly boring.

The Door in the Hedge by Robin McKinley
Kindle
Read 12/18/2020-12/24/2020
3 Stars

4.5 stars

When I picked up this book, I had no idea that it was actually made up of four short stories! I really liked this though.

The Lost Princess was the first story and I found that the author's lyrical language matched the mood of a fairy story wonderfully. The descriptions were enchanting. Perhaps sometimes they were too descriptive; I found myself tuning out, or reading without understanding, though this was only rare. I think that I actually liked the writing of this tale more than the actual plot itself. It was a fairly simplistic and obvious plot – the queen's sister is taken by fairies and then, years later, the queen's daughter finds herself taken also. But it was so sweetly told that I found myself getting lost in it. The characters of the king and queen, Gilvan and Alora, I loved the most.

The next story, named The Princess and the Frog, was a retelling of the tale – you've guessed it – The Princess and the Frog! I absolutely love this tale, so was excited to read this! I think I have a soft spot for talking animals – especially talking frogs! I loved how well-spoken the frog was, how human in speech. I felt as though I could read him considering everything he spoke. This was a very short story, but I loved the dark threat Aliyander presented; that was a great twist to the tale. I think this was my favourite out of the four.

The third story was also a good read, but it was the fourth story I was more excited to read, as I've grown to love retellings of the Twelve Dancing Princesses tale this past year. This story didn't disappoint and I loved the ending!

This book read like an ancient fairytale. I could imagine reading it to someone younger as a bedtime story and I think they would love it. :)

I expect better from this author. Granted, this is relatively old, but it still felt facile and often skipped important plot points and scenes, on top of the dated attitudes. The Twelve Dancing Princesses story had the highest number of evocative lines but still a rather unfeminist denouement.

2/23/18 on sale for $1.99 for Kindle version.

3.5

So it's weird for me to give it this rating. I don't like wordy, heavily descriptive, low dialogue, Plot & Story first, fairy retellings...yet, I kinda liked this collection. Even though the stories were all happy endings, the writing is so melancholy that the happy endings just feel sad.

I'm still not sure if McKinley is for me or not, but this was a solid collection that I can see appealing to *a lot* of people.

Really wonderful, McKinley NEVER misses when she's doing fairy tales. My favorite by far was The Twelve Dancing Princesses, which likely surprises exactly no one since I'll almost always pick a retelling over an original. But throughout all four stories, her tone and telling is impeccable, her prose is scrumptious, and it feels rich and glorious and spellbinding without being too heavy. She's a master.

This book was good---a bit short to me, but good. Robin McKinley tells 4 stories in this book. The first(The Door in the Hedge) tells the story of Princes Linadel and her seventeenth birthday, the second being The Hunting of the Hind (i think?) where Korah's brother is bewitched by the hind and it is up to her to save him from the spell. The third one is a favorite: The Frog Princess. Princess Rana is courted- unhappily- by the Prince ALiyander, a sorcerer. She finds a frog in the pond who retrieves a necklace for her---except this frog is not ordinary--it can speak. The last tory is of The Twelve Dancing Princesses--the princesses are enspelled to dance through the soles of their shoes every night until a war-weary soldier comes to uncover their secret.

This collection of four fairy tales from Robin McKinley (a retelling of the princess and the frog and of the 12 dancing princesses, along with two new fairy tales) is absolutely delightful, weaving together magic, romance, and strong female characters. McKinley truly is a master of fantasy, and I was once again enraptured by her storytelling.

My favorite piece in the collection was The Princess and the Frog, which is more of a short story, while some of the other pieces are truly novella length. I like how the princess and the frog must work together to restore order to the world, and how she never actually kisses the frog. (Don't worry--there's still a romance.)

Haunting and or mysterious little retellings of fairy tales. They'd have been even better read out-loud by a sister who shall remain nameless.

I decided to up my rating on this from my average rating of the 4 stories because I did enjoy them and I really like fairy tales.

This collection consisted of two original fairy tales and two retellings of popular fairy tales.

The Stolen Princess: 2.75 stars
The Princess and the Frog: 2.5 stars
The Hunting of the Hind: 2 stars
The Twelve Dancing Princesses: 3 stars

Average rating: 2.5 stars

Favorite to Least Favorite

The Stolen Princess
The Frog Princess
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
The Hunting of the Hind

I did like the premises of the stories, but the execution was often lacking. Especially in the first story, the author used really flowery language that detracted from the story and made me extremely confused. This was a trend throughout the stories, and one that I could have done without. Even though they are fairy tales, I think that they could have been fleshed out more, especially with the characters because they fell in love in a short period of time or got married and there was little connection between them, especially in the first story. If the language was simplified and the characters fleshed out more, they would be a lot better. I was disappointed that I didn’t like them more, but they were too often confusing and I didn’t know what was really happening.

I found the prologues in the first and last stories to be unnecessary. Fairy tales, and works as short as these, do not need prologues, and they were sort of boring and made me not want to read the story. The information from the prologue should have just been woven into the story, and really the same thing goes for the epilogues.

One thing that I was not a fan of was the stories still reinforcing gender roles and the idea of women as property, especially in the retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

It was sort of a mixed bag because I liked one of the original stories and one of the retellings, which had a different twist on it from other retellings that I have read, but I disliked the other retelling because there was not really anything that different from other versions. In fact, I realized that I think I had heard that sort of spin on The Twelve Dancing Princesses from The book Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George, so if you like this I would recommend trying that one. And I pretty much absolutely hated the other original story, The Hunting of the Hind, because it was confusing a lot of the time.

I was hoping to really love these stories and while I didn’t, I do think I would read them again because I did like them, just not as much as I was expecting, and I still have some mixed feelings about this book.

The female characters written by Robin McKinley stand out as strong, independent and willful. It is my favorite part about the stories especially as the male characters never question that the women can and should act in this manner.

I will admit to liking many of McKinley's book more than this collection of short stories but they were entertaining. Each story has a unique bent that gives added depth to the characters of the story.