Paperback, 306 pages
Published
March 2nd 2009
by Bloomsbury
(first published September 18th 2007)
ISBN
0747597812
(ISBN13: 9780747597810)
edition language
English
original title
The Book of a Thousand Days
characters
literary awards
When Dashti, a maid,
and Lady Saren, her mistress, are shut in a tower for seven years for
Saren’s refusal to marry a man she despises, the two prepare for a very
long and dark imprisonment.
As food runs low and the days go from
broiling hot to freezing cold, it is all Dashti can do to keep them fed
and comfortable. But the arrival outside the tower of Saren’s two
suitors—one welcome, and the other decidedly less so—brings both hope
and great danger, and Dashti must make the desperate choices of a girl
whose life is worth more than she knows.
With Shannon Hale’s
lyrical language, this forgotten but classic fairy tale from the
Brothers Grimm is reimagined and reset on the central Asian steppes; it
is a completely unique retelling filled with adventure and romance,
drama and disguise.
My Review
How best to describe this book other than dull and boring. A book that I merely read with the hopes of it getting better, but also because I am too stubborn to put it down and pretend that it was a decent read. Juat the whole layout of the novel itself was boring and not imaginative at all. In fact for me the only interesting part of the novel was perhaps my lord the cat but merely because I have a soft spot when it comes to animals, especially cats. The book is based around two people mainly. Lady Saren who is as her title claims her to be, a lady and her maid, Dashti, a simple and yet flawed mucker. The novel is about the time that they spend together, 1000 days of it being trapped within the brick walls of a tower, a prison for the lady saren who is refusing to mary Lord Khasar because of his secret. Of course, the idea of living in a tower for as long as seven years becomes a ridiculous idea right from the beginning and you know already that surely they will break out because its just not something that can be done. However it is the layout of the book which I find most annoying and irritating. it is set out in the formation of diary entries, telling us the day to day passings that occur. But the text of the novel is so basic and unimaginative that I am not even sure a ten year old would find this an exciting or worthwhile read.
The story is meant to be based on an old myth, but it is not one that I have ever heard of and that makes me wonder, is anyone else therefore likely to have heard it and therefore understand it for what it is? my opinion is no because its clearly not something we are taught or aware off. Because of this we therefore get no real sense of identity when it comes to the characters in that we can not and do not begin to understand them nor the time era that they are in and the customs in which they are use to. a good book for me is one that can allow me to enter a world and new time era that actually makes me feel like I am living in that period. But this novel does none of that, and you find yourself barely even managing to skim the pages to find out what occurs next. It is a very lame, in my opinion this is, fairytale. one with a lack of anything. Not even the characters are as developed as well as they could have been which is a real shame.
I got annoyed with the pictures merely for the fact, that pictures should always be of importance to the novel in time, but the pictures seemed to do nothing to the story itself, not seeming to make it anymore attractive than what it was before. In many ways it comes across as a very mixed up story. yes perhaps there was meant to bea moral and meaning within it, something that we are perhaps meant to learn from and understand, but that cooncept was not at all grasped and therefore made the book a huge disappointment. This is why I am only giving the book a one star rating and that star is merely to acknowledge the fact that someone took time and effort to try and write what I am sure was meant to be a well produced book,. but was not. Perhaps others feel differently about the novel and this of course is their right. but these are my opinions of the novel and it is therefore not one I shall be picking up again.
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