by Donna Jo Napoli
Zel lives in a remote cottage in the mountains with Mother. The only time she sees other people is twice a year, when they go to Market in the nearest town, quite some distance away. While Zel finds the people, bustle and excitement of town life exhilarating, Mother insists that they have everything...
It was a pretty faithful retelling. The original fairy tale is pretty short so it’s a good spring board for a story. Napoli does put her own twists on the story but it really works.I like the 3 narrators. It definitely gave the story some more strength. To a certain extent it made all of the charact...
A 4 star story until the last chapter, which read like a strange, surreal epilogue. It felt somewhat out of place, too mysterious and impossible even for this mysterious and magical tale.
This was a very interesting read. I found the writing pleasant, although I don't usually enjoy present tense, but besides that there wasn't much I liked. It's told from 3 different points of view: Zel, Mother, and Konrad. Zel and Konrad's parts were both told in 3rd person, but Mother's part was tol...
The first book I ever read by Napoli was Bound. It was a quick read, but I really enjoyed it. So I looked around on Goodreads and found out that Napoli has written quite a few books that are twists on the fairy tales we all know and love. So the first one I picked up was Zel. Zel, which is short for...
This started out badly, and I only stuck with it past the first few pages because it is so short. I know that it is YA, or supposed to be, but this book has an identity crisis. The writing feels incredibly juvenile, simplistic to the point of feeling like it was written by a teen rather than just fo...
I picked this up because it was on the "recommended" list at the back of one of Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow's anthologies - and I'm very glad I did!It's a retelling of the story of Rapunzel, set in the 1500's in Switzerland. While Napoli does not take out the more fantastic/magical elements of t...
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