A Kiss in Time

     A Kiss in Time is a modern day fairytale retelling of Sleeping Beauty. I'm a sucker for fairytales and any kind of retelling. I was originally searching the Library for Beastly, but their copy was out at the time. Instead I grabbed A Kiss in Time to hold me off as I wait for Beastly to come back in.

     The writing in the book was OK. It was in the first person present tense narrative, and you should already know I have a thing against that type of narrative. Alex put a twist on it though, and switched between Talia's (Sleeping Beauty) and Jack's (true love) point of view. That was different, and sometimes confusing if you didn't pay attention to the name at the top of the chapter in order to know who was speaking. I had to go back and look a couple of times to remember, but mostly I just figured it out for myself if I forgot to look at the name.
     The pacing was nice. Not to fast, not to slow. Plot development was nice too. I liked how Alex Flinn used the concept of true love in this book. The true love prompted Jack to kiss Talia while she was asleep, but he refused to acknowledge it, saying it was because she was really beautiful. The story covered a week's time, and then the epilogue was a two years later deal, and I like how Alex concluded it. It was a nice retelling, and made me even more curious to read Beastly.
     The characters were great. Not even Talia with her gifts from the fairies was perfect. And how Alex portrayed Malvolia (Maleficent for the Disney peeps out there) was also unique. Malvolia wasn't evil for the sake of evilness, she was a woman scorned, just not in a romantic way.

     A Kiss in Time was a very easy and enjoyable read. It is a nice retelling of Sleeping Beauty and was enjoyable.

One of the goals for this blog is to provide information for parents and readers alike to find 'clean' reads suitable for their children or themselves. In my reviews I will give a rating and a reason for that rating.

       I would give A Kiss in Time a rating of light PG. I would recommend it for teens. Drinking, partying, and some immodest dress.

      On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = horrible, 2 = OK, 3 = I liked it, 4 = I really liked it, 5 = I loved it), I would give A Kiss in Time a 3

Blogtober #15 - Light & Dark, Good & Evil: A Thought's Post

"Darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good."

I have mentioned this quote from the book Marked a couple of times and how I wasn't quite sure that I agreed with what it said. Well, I finally sat down and organized my thoughts and this is what I have come up with.

In regards to books, I think this quote sums up excellently the change in modern culture's opinion on good and evil in books. Things that are evil and dark, like vampires, or dragons, werewolves, and so on, are not evil and dark. Things that are good and light, like elves, and fairies, and angels, (probably most importantly GOD), are not good and light. Modern fairytales leave you with a sense of confusion. You grew up reading stories where the dragon was evil and had to be slain, yet now they are a fad, everyone wants a dragon. Vampires were once heartless, soulless creatures who would suck your blood out because they needed it to survive, now you are presented with 'vegetarian' vampires, and vampires with morals. Then you get Christians mixed in, like the People of Faith in Marked, and you loose that boundary of morals even more. People with Christian morals are the oppressor, the bad guys (in Marked the People of Faith are clearly that, because that is the great misconception society has about Christians today).

Moving deeper into it, however, you are presented with even more complexity. You have stories (Fantasy) and humans (reality) and those are jumbled together and mixed up to where there is no fantasy and no reality. Modern society gives mythological creatures souls and morals, makes them good, and goes and makes humans (mostly Christians) the evil thing to be gotten rid of.

"The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”  - G.K. Chesterton

We grew up believe that dragons could be conquered. Now our children are growing up believing that humans should be conquered with dragons.  People with authority should be ignored and defeated. You wonder why teens today are so depressed? It's because the morals they grew up on, that humans can defeat the giant, undefeatable monsters like dragons has been twisted. No longer can you look towards yourself to defeat the dragon, because maybe the dragon (no matter how 'good' it is) cannot be defeated. Humans are being characterized as the evil to be defeated. Seriously think on it, humans are evil, they have to be killed using vampires, or werewolves, or dragons, they don't allow for the complexity of human nature to come through. In Marked Zoey is no longer a human, she is a vampire. Every human that she knows (her grandmother being the one exception) is the bad guy (or at least so weak that she can easily rule over them), and don't get her started on the oppressive People of Faith. It clamors for teens to start to worship the goddess Nyx, because she is the almighty, beautiful, and good goddess, whereas the People of Faith's god, (AKA the Christian God) is the degrading, ugly, and evil god. Wonder why there are shootings in school? Look at what they read. It tells them that things that do exist (humans, God, Christianity) are evil, and the things that are evil (vampires, gods and goddesses) are good. Wouldn't you be utterly depressed if there was only evil in this world? They don't realize that there is good out there, because all they read about is that the good in our world is actually evil.

Taking the words of Neil Gaimen, who is paraphrasing the earlier quote from G.K. Chesterton:

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

And remember to 'read the right books' (C.S. Lewis Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader reference there.) Because...

"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." - C.S. Lewis

Blogtober #14 - Fairytales, Tristram & Iseult

     Many of my friends know that I am a die hard for fairytales. From Disney, to Brother's Grimm, to fantasy stories, those are my favorites. I love reading Shakespeare (when I have time because it takes some effort to read his work), and (of course) love stories are my favorites. A friend recently shared the following song with me and the story it is based on. It reminded me that I had heard of the story and knew of the basic plot line, but had never finished it or fully learned the story. And it is the story of Tristram and Iseult (also called Tristan and Isolt, sometimes Tristan and Isolde, depends on translation)

The song and story are beautiful. My friend said this is her new favorite love story, whereas it was Romeo and Juliet (honestly I was never found of Romeo and Juliet, but Tristram and Iseult I am). Granted the following quote is from Wikipedia, it gives a good background to the story:

Tristan and Iseult is a legend made popular during the 12th century through French medieval poetry, and inspired from archetypal Celtic legends. It has become an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan (Tristram) and the Irish princess Iseult (Isolde, Yseult, etc.). The narrative predates and most likely influenced the Arthurian romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, and has had a substantial impact on Western art, the idea of romantic love and literature since it first appeared in the 12th century. While the details of the story differ from one author to another, the overall plot structure remains much the same.

There are many different renditions of the story (one of the popular ones is by Matthew Arnold). But the one my friend referred me to is from Cornwall's Wonderland by Mabel Quiller Couch. You can find her version of Tristram and Iseult here along with some other stories from her book.

There are also some beautiful paintings of Tristram and Iseult.

like this one painting by Hugues Merle

Tristram and Iseult has been written into songs, poems, movies, and plays. Although I am not familiar with any other versions besides Mabel Couch's, I really prefer this love story to Romeo and Juliet. First, Tristram is a noble knight (at first he was stuck up, but despite the short length of Mabel's version, you can see his character growth fantastically in it), and he tries to do well to all. If he and Iseult hadn't been under the effects of a powerful love potion, I think they could have moved on to other people (since Iseult married Tristram's uncle, because his Uncle knew they had a thing for each other and wanted to hurt Tristram out of envy). I think that is way I find this story more appealing than Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, because this is tragic because no matter how hard they tried to move on from each other, they couldn't through no fault of their own.

This is a beautiful story, and well worth reading more of.
(And as for a rating, I would give it a light PG, it is considered by many as an adulterous relationship, and there is blood, fights, killing, and poison, so I would be comfortable (in regards to Mabel Couch's version) to let 12 + read it)