meganbmoore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
meganbmoore) wrote2009-05-05 10:24 am
meganbmoore) wrote2009-05-05 10:24 am
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Sydney White and Gregory Maguire
I didn't really go in for most teenybopper movies even when I was one, but I thought I'd check Sydney White out because I like fairy tale adaptations. Like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, Snow White isn't a fairy tale I've ever been particularly fond of, always prefering story like The Snow Queen, East of the Sun West of the Moon, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, The Seven Swans, and even The Frog Prince. Like Ever After, though, it seems you can make me like the story if you rewrite it so that the heroine is the heroine of her own story instead of getting rescued by a prince she barely knows because she's pretty and pure and does chores.
This sets the story on a college campus where Sydney, a plumber's daughter, joines the sorority her mother was a member of only to be kicked out by Rachel Witchburn, who rules the campus, for not being "Sorority material." And because the guy Rachel likes likes Sydney. I may or may not love Rachel because she tried to run down the marching band. The seven dwarves are the seven campus dorks who live in a rundown cottage on campus, and who Sydney uses to try to overthrow the absolute rule of the campus sororities and fraternities.
By pur coincidence, I've also started to read Gregory Maquire's Mirror, Mirror, which is a retelling of Snow White set in Itally in the early 1500s, with Lucrezia Borgia as the wicked stepmother. I should be in love, but am actually a bit bored, I think mainly because there are already I think 4 narrative voices in 50 pages, and none really grab me, though I'm sticking with it, though it's mostly making me want to reread Cantarella. For fans of Maguire's: does it get more interesting when the lead grows up? Is this one of his better books? Well liked? Etc.
This sets the story on a college campus where Sydney, a plumber's daughter, joines the sorority her mother was a member of only to be kicked out by Rachel Witchburn, who rules the campus, for not being "Sorority material." And because the guy Rachel likes likes Sydney. I may or may not love Rachel because she tried to run down the marching band. The seven dwarves are the seven campus dorks who live in a rundown cottage on campus, and who Sydney uses to try to overthrow the absolute rule of the campus sororities and fraternities.
By pur coincidence, I've also started to read Gregory Maquire's Mirror, Mirror, which is a retelling of Snow White set in Itally in the early 1500s, with Lucrezia Borgia as the wicked stepmother. I should be in love, but am actually a bit bored, I think mainly because there are already I think 4 narrative voices in 50 pages, and none really grab me, though I'm sticking with it, though it's mostly making me want to reread Cantarella. For fans of Maguire's: does it get more interesting when the lead grows up? Is this one of his better books? Well liked? Etc.
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However, I ♥ because you totally reminded me that I own all three of the Twelve Kingdoms novels and that I've never read them. I'm fifty pages away from finishing the first one...and you are right, the story holds up under Tokyopop's treatment...and ....and, how much do I love this series? I'm actually going to have to rewatch the anime, now that I've been reminded how awesome it was. I had forgotten how much I loved Yoko's development as a character.
Also, because I am to lazy to go back and find the post, I love shiny retellings of the Little Mermaid, so obviously I had to go buy Evyione when I saw your post. It was worth the money, so thank you!
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Twelve Kingdoms is great! The Tokyopop translations are lacking in parts (such as terminology) but they did a decent job overall.
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Yeah, I find parts of the Tokyopop stuff a little strange, but overall it just means there is MOAR to the series than there was before, and so I am happy. I really, really hope they don't cancel. I have money, well not really, but I'd give my food money for more, honest!
*At this point, I'm kinda hoping the Sea Witch and the merman get together...
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I tried Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister but halfway through the book I realized that I didn't care for any of the characters and was, again, really bored and just put it down and walked away.
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I wanted to add though as just a throwaway comment but while I appreciate what he's trying to do in retelling fairytales I think he does it clumsily? At least that's how I felt with Confessions. I get that he wanted to focus on the step-sisters and make them more human but what he did was just switch their roles. The step-sisters were poor hard working girls and Cinderella was just a spoiled brat. I would have been more interesting to have all three balanced out with thier own faults and perhaps reasons, good or bad, for their choices but instead we get extremes again. Blah.
Anyway you've made it a lot farther in Mirror, Mirror then I have so good luck!
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My favorites of his are Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (though it comes off as much more YA than his other novels) and Wicked, which I adore. I will say that the book Wicked is very different from the musical, so if someone saw the musical first and came to the book expecting that, I'd see why they'd be disappointed. I like the book better (possibly because I read it first), but they are completely different creatures. I think of the book as more adult, dark, and political, but that could just be me.
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We are the only two. This makes me so sad >:.
I read Wicked before watching the musical.
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I liked it a lot better than "Wicked" (which I would have liked better if he had cut out a lot of the digressions), but overall I think Maguire is a little dull. What seems to get the best reviews for him seems to be "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister", which I haven't read.
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Holy shit I should catch up on Cantarella.
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I echo what's been said here; good idea, crap execution. Particulary because it was Cinderella, it's been done and done so much better.
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