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Take a moment, if you will, to imagine a mad sultan of long ago who, after being betrayed by one woman, decided to punish all women for her crimes by taking a new wife everyday, and having her executed the next morning. Now imagine a brave and clever young woman who concocts a plot with her sister to save the women of her nation by offering herself as a bride, and then saving herself (and so the future brides) by telling the sultan a story, but not finishing it, so that he must spare her if he wants to learn what happens. After 1001 nights, he has learned the error of his ways and fallen in love with his wife, and so spares her life and, as a result, the lives of every other woman.
And so you have the awesome framing story of 1001 Arabian Nights.
Now imagine, if you will, that the mad sultan wasn’t mad and didn’t murder women. Oh no, the sultan, in fact, is totally blameless. Everything is the fault of the evil wife who cursed him so that he would be unable to love until he was loved. In fact, every woman not biologically related to the heroine is, inevitably, an evil schemer. If they aren’t adulteresses, then they’re cruel to children. This, of course, is the natural way of the world. It is also the natural way of the world that no one wants a heroine who is a normal girl who succeeds due to bravery, cunning and intelligence. Oh no. Girls with foretold destinies and mystic abilities who are mysterious legends in the palace are, by nature, far superior. In addition, it is unnatural for a woman to risk death to save her nation in general, much less to save other woman. No, women must only do such a thing for true love to prove that the man planning to kill women just needs the love of a pure and virtuous heroine to fix him after that nasty other woman hurt him.
And so you have Cameron Dokey’s The Storyteller’s Daughter.
You will, perhaps, note that bits of this are written in a somewhat irritating style. Amplify this irritation about 20 times (as I lack the stomach to be consistent about it), add a bit of twee-ness and a fair bit of snide condescension that’s meant to imitate oral storytelling, and you end up with an amazing argument against omniscient narrators.
In short: 1001 Arabian Nights is spiffy. Scheherazade rocks. The Storyteller’s Daughter, Sultan Woobie, Miss Sooper Special Destiny, and their romance do not.
And so you have the awesome framing story of 1001 Arabian Nights.
Now imagine, if you will, that the mad sultan wasn’t mad and didn’t murder women. Oh no, the sultan, in fact, is totally blameless. Everything is the fault of the evil wife who cursed him so that he would be unable to love until he was loved. In fact, every woman not biologically related to the heroine is, inevitably, an evil schemer. If they aren’t adulteresses, then they’re cruel to children. This, of course, is the natural way of the world. It is also the natural way of the world that no one wants a heroine who is a normal girl who succeeds due to bravery, cunning and intelligence. Oh no. Girls with foretold destinies and mystic abilities who are mysterious legends in the palace are, by nature, far superior. In addition, it is unnatural for a woman to risk death to save her nation in general, much less to save other woman. No, women must only do such a thing for true love to prove that the man planning to kill women just needs the love of a pure and virtuous heroine to fix him after that nasty other woman hurt him.
And so you have Cameron Dokey’s The Storyteller’s Daughter.
You will, perhaps, note that bits of this are written in a somewhat irritating style. Amplify this irritation about 20 times (as I lack the stomach to be consistent about it), add a bit of twee-ness and a fair bit of snide condescension that’s meant to imitate oral storytelling, and you end up with an amazing argument against omniscient narrators.
In short: 1001 Arabian Nights is spiffy. Scheherazade rocks. The Storyteller’s Daughter, Sultan Woobie, Miss Sooper Special Destiny, and their romance do not.