Scoop of the e-e-evening: Wildwood Dancing

Wildwood Dancing

By Juliet Marillier

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(Reviewed by my 14 y/o brother, Robbie, whose reading tastes vary from David Copperfield to Nancy Drew to Swallows and Amazons. He’s kind of like Mikey in those old Life cereal commercials … he’ll try anything, and his approval is worth noting.)

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I thoroughly enjoyed Wildwood Dancing. From the beginning of this book till the end I was enthralled. The story is a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, a fairy tale of twelve sisters who travel to an enchanted kingdom every night and dance until dawn, only then returning to their father’s castle through a magical portal.

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Juliet Marillier reduced the number of sisters to five, and the number of visits to the “Other Kingdom” to one a month. On the night of Full Moon, the sisters lock themselves into their room and open the portal by casting the shadows of their hands upon the wall. They’ve been going to the Other Kingdom for nine years, and no one except the second sister, Jenica’s, pet frog, Gogu, knows their secret. But when their father becomes ill and must leave for the clearer air of the seaside, and their power-hungry cousin Cezar decides to take over her home, Jenica must fight to keep her beloved friends from the Other Kingdom safe. While Jenica is struggling for her home, her eldest sister, Tatiana, is distracted from all her duties by her love for Sorrow, a man from the Other Kingdom and possibly one of the mysterious Night People.

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The book had just the right amount of fairy tale mixed in with reality. It was a very good book that deserves to be read more than once.