Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

Where to Buy | amazon, barnes and noble, borders

Premise | When Dashti, a maid, and Lady Saren, her mistress, are shut in a tower for seven years because of Saren’s refusal to marry a man she despises, the two prepare for a very long and dark imprisonment.

As food runs low and the days go from broiling hot to freezing cold, it is all Dashti can do to keep them fed and comfortable. With the arrival outside the tower of Saren’s two suitors—one welcome, the other decidedly less so—the girls are confronted with both hope and great danger, and Dashti must make the desperate choices of a girl whose life is worth more than she knows.

With Shannon Hale’s lyrical language, this little-known classic fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm is reimagined and resent on the central Asia steppes; it is a unique retelling filled with adventure and romance, drama and disguise.

Review | Book of a Thousand Days is quite different from the rest of Shannon Hale’s stories. This one has a completely different structure. It’s written in the form of diary entries from the point of view of Dashti.

I enjoyed reading about their imprisonment in the tower as it was captivating but I was disappointed they didn’t stay in there longer, nor were their troubles all that life-threatening. The characters felt a bit flat this time around. I don’t understand why Saren didn’t want to marry her other suitor, as it wasn’t explained very thoroughly.

Dashti’s song singing was pretty neat and I liked the fact that she wasn’t the usual perfectly beautiful heroines as she was marked from birth with red splotches over her skin. Hale’s writing was as fluid as ever but I felt there was something missing from it, just like the story. Maybe it proclaimed to have adventure, a lot of it, but there wasn’t enough to substantiate my thirst.

I’ve never heard of this fairy tale and found it uber fun that she reset it on Asian steppes, because my Asian side of me totally digs that. There needs to be more of these sort of Asian-esque novels.

In one part of the book Dashti goes:

“The song for unknown ailments is a wail. High the notes stretch, my throat stretching with them, the tune reaching up and up like a wounded bird’s call, “Rain rips as it falls, it tears as it falls!”

And I was reminded of this singer, Alan. She uses Tibetan wails a lot in her songs. Here’s an example of one:

And here’s another if you really want to hear her get into crazy full on stuff. It starts from about the halfway point.

Nice entry into her works but lacking something.

Grade | B