The sequel to this 2005 folktale retelling, West, was just published this week (it's still waiting on my Kindle).Įast is a retelling of the Norwegian tale 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon ' you can read one version of it here. Whenever I have nothing to read, this is the first book I pick up, and I read it all over again.

She did an amazing job of showing the uncertainty that was felt between the two.Īll around I would recomend this book to anyone who loves a great adventure story. But Edith gave the two characters time to grow together. Most authors would have Rose run into the arms of the White Bear and they would live perfectly from that moment on. Their relationship was amazing and wasn't all fluffed up. What Rose and the White Bear had was tender and fragile and real. Now some people would be disappointed by the 'romance' in the book, or lack there of, but that didn't bother me one bit. Rose is just amazing and you can't help but admiring her persistence. I really enjoyed how the characters evolved over the span of the book. I also love that it is multiple books in one book, though never meant to be a serise. Push through them and I promise you will not be disappointed. I fell inlove with Rose and her personality from the beginning, the first few pages a a little slow, but that is just setting the story. The chapters weren't long so you could just fly through the book with no trouble.

I love the White Bear and I love reading what he has to say and the riddles and poems he speaks in.

I love how it shifts views and tells you what other people are doing and how it has many plots that all tie together in the book. I've read it so many times and never has it grown old. Her treatment of the white bear and the four winds was interesting, but I didn't really appreciate the latter until I read her own afterward (which, incidentally, was more interesting than the story itself).Įven though it's only a two-star book, I find myself holding onto it because I'm rather proud of my collection of retold fairy tales. For example, she uses phrases such as, 'It was clear they really loved each other,' without telling us what made it clear, which makes it sound like it actually wasn't all that clear at all. Also, no one ever seems to have given Edith that all important advice to 'show and not tell.' Despite the novel being almost 500 pages long, reading it feels more like skimming a summary than entering a world. The author chose to use multiple viewpoints, which felt more like a gimmick and less like the best way to tell the story (especially since I was only really interested in the stories from two of the five narrators). Unfortunately, this retelling doesn't quite do it justice. This novel is a retelling of 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon' which is probably one of the most underappreciated fairy tales out there.

East by Edith Pattou