Edith Pattou

Beauty and the Beast but make it Scandinavian.

The premise was good (and, well, that’s the Beauty and the Beast part, honestly), but the method was…not. It dragged. It was a slog. And I think it wouldn’t have felt so overly-long if the characters had been given any amount of personality. I mean, any at all. They feel like cardboard people flatly carrying out the action of the plot, which, in itself, had no real zest to it, plodding along with a ‘this happened and then this and then this’ vibe. No tension, no surprising elements, no depth to be found anywhere. Blech.… (altro)

Classic fairy tale "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" is transplanted to 16th-century Europe for a story about cartography, weaving, and trolls.

East is filtered through multiple voices: some of these perspectives make sense (the heroine, the bear, the troll queen); some of them are less explicable (Rose's father and brother, who do little of note). The book does a nice job of grounding fairy-tale archetypes and conventions into a realistic setting, but it doesn't do anything particularly innovative or radical with the material. I craved pulpier thrills, but East tends more to the mellow and low-key.… (altro)