Robin McKinley

Fairy Tales — (1978-2000) These are re-tellings of classic fairy tales, folk tales, and legends.

The Door in the Hedge: "We Will Look. No One Has Ever Thought to Look Before"

Despite an interesting title and a beguiling title page, I honestly found nothing exceptional about Robin McKinley's collection of four fairytales. Whether her stories are original or retold, they are rather dull, predictable, and written with long-winded language that makes for sluggish reading. All are centered on the interactions between this world and that of Faerieland — or to be more specific, the interactions between young princesses and the inhabitants of Faerieland. None of these girls are individuals, instead they are cast straight from the princess stereotype and all the stories end on a slightly sickly-sweet note with each dilemma that the girls' face wrapped up in a nice little bow. Faerieland is not seen as a wild and elusive place, but as a pretty sparkling land with none of the depth or hidden meaning that fairytales are meant to have. They are sweet, pretty, pointless tales have nothing of the ambiguity or beauty that they could.

In "The Stolen Princess," McKinley tells the tale of one of the last kingdoms that border the realm of Faery, and the anxiety that the residents face concerning the possible stealing of their children. This happened to the Queen's twin sister Ellian, and now the same thing has happened to happen to their only child Linadel. The King and Queen take it upon themselves to rescue their daughter, whilst she herself awakens in the Faerie realm to greet its inhabitants. The pacing of the story is extremely slow, the "love-at-first-sight" scenario is entirely unconvincing, and the descriptions of Faerieland are unimaginative and flat — it sounds like quite a dull place actually.

"The Princess and the Frog" is a retelling of the princess who drops her golden ball and has it returned to her by a frog. Here, the Princess Rana is saved from the malevolent power of an unwelcome suitor's necklace by a talking frog. The ending is utterly preposterous: the frog returns to his human form, and challenges the suitor Aliyander — at this stage Rana runs out of the room, down to the pond, fills a flagon with its water and rushes back to dump the whole lot on Aliyander. Presumably, since no other explanation is given, we are meant to suppose that during this lengthy interlude of running and fetching water, the two foes simply stood looking at each other, since when Rana returns neither one of them has moved. Furthermore, how Rana knows that the pond-water will destroy Aliyander is completely unexplained, and therefore comes across as random and bizarre.

"The Hunting of the Hind" is possibly the only worthwhile read, which tells of Princess Korah, whose kingdom is plagued by the beauty of a golden hind, the very sight of which drives men into madness. When this terrible affliction lands upon her beloved brother, Korah herself goes out in search of the hind to learn its secrets. However, this story too comes to an annoying ending: the hind is under a spell, which can only be broken if a person goes to the wizard who placed the curse and asks him to remove it. But to prevent the wizard from using your inner emotions against you, one must enter his presence completely devoid of any feelings. So Korah leaves her inner emotions in the keeping of the transformed hind (err, how exactly?) and asks the wizard for her freedom. That's it. I was expecting some sort of twist, some sort of test or trick that the young girl must go through, but no — that's it. To top it off, McKinley throws in a brother to the golden hind to act as love-interest for Korah — why must every Princess land herself a hubby in the course of her adventures? Can't she just have the adventure for its own sake?

Lastly is the longest story, "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" which is told from the point of view of a middle-aged soldier, and is made all the better for it — by this stage I was thoroughly tired of McKinley's flat princess-heroines. The soldier takes up the challenge of solving the mystery of the twelve princesses, whose shoes appear each morning entirely worn out, as if they have been dancing all the night long. If you have read this old fairytale, then there is nothing here that will surprise you — McKinley tells the exact same story, except she takes twice as long to do it. There is a slight shadow of intrigue with the appearance of an old woman who aids the soldier, but it's not enough to warrant the energy I used in dragging myself through this story.

Robin McKinley is a gifted author, and I have enjoyed many of her books, but this collection just left me entirely unsatisfied. I've tried to give legitimate reasons as to why this is simply isn't a worthwhile book, without simply ranting at it, and the truth is that it just felt completely devoid of any real magic or passion. —Rebecca Fisher

Beauty

I am easily found, if you want me…

I hate writing negative reviews, especially for books that are obviously both loved and respected. Beauty appeals to a lot of people, and you may well want to disregard my opinion and go with the majority. But for what it's worth, I can't quite bring myself to recommend Beauty for those of you out there who enjoy reading novels in the fairytale genre.

To McKinley's credit, Beauty was written before the sudden demand in retold/fractured/fleshed-out fairytales. In fact, she may have very well started the trend with this novelisation of the traditional Beauty and the Beast story. But these days, authors tend to put a spin on the source material. For example, Donna Jo Napoli often gets the villain's side of the story, as she does in Spinners, Zel, and The Magic Circle. Helen Lowe told the tale of Sleeping Beauty from the Prince's point of view in Thornspell. Gail Carson Levine's adaptation of Cinderella gives us a reason why the original heroine was such a pushover (fairy spell of obedience gone bad) in her comedic Ella Enchanted.

McKinley's Beauty simply tells the tale of "Beauty and the Beast", based on the French version by Charles Perrault. A wealthy merchant with three daughters looses his fortune and is forced to relocate his family to the countryside. On his way back from a business trip, he loses his way in the woods, finds an enchanted castle, and is treated like a king for a night. The following morning he leaves, but picks a rose for his youngest daughter Beauty, leading the master of the house — a disfigured beast — to demand repayment in the form of the merchant's youngest daughter. Her father returns home with the news, she agrees and sets off...you know the rest. There are no surprises, no variations in the tale, no need for a spoiler warning. This is Beauty and the Beast as you've always known it, complete with Beast's nightly proposals, Beauty's longing to return home, and the final mercy dash through the forest and transformation sequence.

But it does not necessarily follow that predictability means the story isn't worth it — for if the journey is compelling and original then it doesn't matter if there's a foregone conclusion. And in this case, McKinley adds meat to the story by fleshing out the characters with likeable personalities, adding detail to the whys and wherefores of the familiar storyline and including a few inconsequential subplots concerning Beauty's family. But it is in this attempt that the story feels a little flat.

Beauty is a nice enough heroine: she's courageous, humble and intelligent. But it turns out that "Beauty" is just her nickname (her real name is "Honor"), and she considers herself quite a plain girl. And yes, I know it's horribly unfair considering Beauty was published many years before Twilight hit the shelves, but when Beauty comes out with the following: "You should marry a queen or something, a duchess at least, not a drab dull little nothing like myself," I had hideous flashbacks of Bella Swan.

I'm all for a heroine who isn't a glamorous supermodel, but when it comes to this particular fairytale, my preference runs toward versions in which Beauty IS reflective of her name. I mean, isn't that the whole point of this fairytale? That someone stunningly beautiful is capable of falling in love with someone who is hideously ugly? Anything else just doesn't have the same sense of grandeur and Romance-with-a-capital-R. However, that's just personal preference, and shouldn't be taken into account in an objective review (if there is such a thing). I'm sure there are many who prefer an ironically-named Beauty.

Beauty's family is given plenty of screen-time as well: her father, her two sisters, her brother-in-law and even her horse Greatheart, and there is more detail surrounding their fall from wealth and their integration into country living. Yet despite the fact that they appear as a loving and supportive family (no spiteful, spoilt sisters here!) they remain rather flat. Beauty's sisters are called Grace and Hope, both are given little sub-love stories (one gets married and has twins, the other pines for her love lost at sea), but don't ask me to name which one did what. I couldn't tell them apart.

More padding is achieved in the six months or so that Beauty spends at the Beast's house. We get lavish descriptions of the elegance and magic of the castle, including a library full of books that haven't been written yet (Beauty peruses a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) as well as her interactions with the Beast. And this is where the story disappoints.

The centerpiece of any "Beauty and the Beast" story is of course the romance that blossoms between the two leads. But here...I just didn't feel it. There is very little to their courtship: they hang out, they exchange small talk, they wander through the gardens and they read books together. But where's the connection? Why do they fall in love with each other? The answer seems to be: because there was no one else available. McKinley spends more time strengthening the bond between Beauty and her plough-horse than she does with her love interest.

Likewise, the sense of "taming the beast" is missing, since the Beast is already noble and gentlemanly. There was a wonderful opportunity here to present the dark side of the romance: Beauty's yearning for freedom, Beast's desperation and despair, their mutual distrust and longing for companionship...all this psychology is only ever touched on briefly in an intriguing scene in which Beauty awakes to find herself sleeping in the Beast's arms. She panics and flees, but after the event occurs the moment is never mentioned again.

Finally, it seems to me that when you flesh out the bare bones of a traditional story, you should take certain aspects that stretched credibility and give them weight and meaning. Case in point: Beauty's father's decision to let Beauty take his place in the Beast's household. No self-respecting father would ever allow this, but we accept it in the fairytale because it's a plot device to demonstrate Beauty's selflessness and get her where she needs to go. But in a novelisation it deserves some more thought. Here however, Beauty states that she's going, her father puts up a mild protest, and then drops her off at the castle with minimal fuss. There's no attempt on his behalf to prevent his youngest child from going to what may be her death, and as such it's entirely unconvincing if we're meant to believe that he's a loving father.

I realize that his review is extremely subjective, and that my own preferences have clouded what many find to be a very good book. However, I also think that a good book (and a good author, as Robin McKinley is) can hold its own against criticism and that this review certainly won't harm its reputation. But on a final note, it's worth saying that in recent years McKinley once more dealt with the subject matter of Beauty and the Beast in her novel Rose Daughter which suggests that even the author herself was somewhat unsatisfied with her first effort in Beauty. —Rebecca Fisher

Rose Daughter

Can a beast who loves roses so much be so very terrible?

It's been years since I read and reviewed Robin McKinley's Beauty, her first rendition of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. Despite the book's popularity, I wasn't particularly moved by it, and ended my review saying that I was looking forward to experiencing her second retelling of the same story, seeing how an author would approach the same material the second time around.

Well, it took me a while (though not as long as the twenty years between each book's publication) but I've finally tracked down and read Rose Daughter. So how does it measure up with its predecessor? On the whole, I enjoyed it a lot more. The prose is more polished (insofar as I could recall Beauty) and the story itself more sophisticated in several ways, including an interesting variation on the Beast's curse and a twist ending. What remains the same is the novel's basic structure: after an elderly merchant's business fails, he and his three beautiful daughters relocate to the countryside, far away from their old life of luxury.

But as with McKinley's last retelling, Beauty is not saddled with two unpleasant sisters. Instead, the trio of girls make the most of their new life, and the love of family is what pulls them through their hardships. Beauty soon becomes enamoured with the strange thorny plants that fill the garden of their new home — though it's not until spring that she realizes they're roses. Years pass in happiness, but after a bad winter and news that one of their father's ships has returned after being lost at sea, Beauty asks her father to bring her a rose in memory of the ones she's missed that year.

Getting lost in a blizzard on the way back, her father arrives at a mysterious estate that provides him with food and shelter, though he sees no one. It is only on taking a rose from the breakfast table that the master of the house appears: a terrible beast who demands the merchant's youngest daughter in retribution for his thievery. You know how the rest goes: Beauty arrives at the mansion, befriends the Beast, and the two start to fall in love despite appearances...

Yet McKinley has some intriguing spins in place to liven up the familiar tale. Whereas Beauty was a straightforward retelling of the Charles Perrault version of the fairytale, Rose Daughter is a bit more original. As with Beauty, a lot of time is spent on fleshing out the characters that make up Beauty's family: not only her father, but also her sisters, who have more distinctive personalities this time around and are named Lionheart and Jeweltongue. Lionheart disguises herself as a boy in order to get a job as a stablehand, Jeweltongue discovers a propensity for needlework that gets her family through the harsh winters, and each has a loving relationship with her younger sister.

Furthermore, there is something of a mystery surrounding the family's possession of Rose Cottage. Having once been lived in by an old woman and her young ward, the house was bequeathed to Beauty's family after their disappearance, though no one seems to know why. With Beauty's care, the roses bloom for the first time in years, and rumours that she might be a greenwitch start in the township. Old stories are dredged up, stories that provide contradictory accounts as to why magic cannot take root in the town since the previous occupants of Rose Cottage left.

These puzzles tie in with the enchantment laid over the Beast's estate, as well as with the dream that has haunted Beauty since she was a child: that of a long passageway with a monster waiting at its end. Not all of these elements come to an entirely satisfying conclusion (rather than a slow unwinding of clues and revelations, the mysteries are resolved through several large info-dumps toward the end of the novel), but they certainly help create a deeper, more elaborate version of this traditional fairytale.

Mainly due to McKinley's dreamy prose, Rose Daughter is also a far more whimsical retelling than Beauty, which I remember being quite grounded in reality despite its magical elements. But here, not only do we have names such as the Duke of Dauntless and the Baron of Grandiloquence, but also insight as to the nature and philosophy of magic. As aforementioned, it all gets a bit talky by the end, and the novel can also be too over-descriptive (every inch of the Beast's home is described in loving detail, and since all those inches seem to be decorated with roses, it's a wonder that Beauty doesn't hate the sight of them by the end of the story).

But there's a frustrating aspect that's common to each version, one that I'd hoped McKinley would rectify the second time around. Although Beauty's departure from her family is handled much better in Rose Daughter, I was still left cold by McKinley's depiction of the romance between Beauty and the Beast — perhaps even more so here than I was the first time around. Once more, the bond between Beauty and her sisters is a thousand times more realistic and poignant than that which she fosters with the Beast, whose interactions with Beauty in Rose Daughter amount to only a handful of conversations over the course of a single week. If you asked me why these two fell in love with each other, I wouldn't be able to tell you.

Still, I enjoyed Rose Daughter, both as a companion-piece to Beauty and on its own merit. Though I often have difficulties with Robin McKinley's books (much like Ursula le Guin, I recognize her talent, but for whatever reason have trouble connecting with her characters and stories on an emotional level), this was a pleasant and thought-provoking read, and comes complete with an insightful afterword in which McKinley explains her reasons for revisiting the fairytale. —Rebecca Fisher

Deerskin

Robin McKinley sure knows how to use the English language. We are in her spell from the beginning. Deerskin commences with Lissar's nurse telling her a fairy tale — but the fairy tale is the story of how Lissar's larger-than-life parents met. She is told from the very cradle what paragons her mother and father are, and yet she herself is ignored by them. McKinley seduces us with the the magical kingdom's rarefied beauty and glamour — and also the coldness and rot at its core. When Lissar flees, we are shown, with the same deftness, an inhospitable wilderness. And when she finds the kingdom of Cofta, we can't help but notice the difference between it and Lissar's old home; it is more pompous in its architecture, but filled with human warmth. McKinley is equally at home in the throne room and in the dog kennels, and she makes all of it real for us, as Lissar, with the help of the Moonwoman, heals and begins to imagine a new life for herself.

I knock off half a star because of a little peeve of mine. McKinley's imaginary world is very similar to our own in terms of flora and fauna. People own dogs, ride horses, and hunt deer and rabbits. But then McKinley feels obligated to point out that this is an imaginary world by also populating the forests with "ootag" and "toro." These words are bandied about constantly, but never quite explained, except that they're animals. I still don't know what an ootag is. As for toro, my guess would have been a wild bull (given my knowledge of Romance languages) — but guess what — it's more like a giant stag. Why couldn't she have just said "stag"? I don't know. The made-up words are jarring. Also, the climactic scene is somewhat overdone. Other than that, splendidly done. —Kelly Lasiter