Book #7: "Enchantment"

"Enchantment" by Orson Scott Card is a modern day take on the "Sleeping Beauty" fairy tale. It draws on the oldest renditions of the fairy tales we know, mainly the stories from Russia. The main character Ivan was raised in Russia, to a Jewish mother and scholarly father who move to America in the mid eighties. Before they are able to fly to America, however, they stay at an idyllic farm where young Ivan finds a beautiful woman asleep in the middle of the forest.

Over the years, Ivan never forgers the woman, even when he's engaged to a young Jewish woman. He travels back to Russia to work on his dissertation which, interestingly enough, is about the root of where our modern day fairy tales come from. On a whim, he travels to the same farm where he stayed as a boy and on a run one day, he finds the same beautiful woman asleep in the forest.

He can't resist defeating the Bear that guards the woman and kissing her. Once he does, however, he's transported back to her time; sometime in the 900's AD. And the fairy tale begins to get dangerous as he and the Princess Katarina must fight the ultimate wicked witch: Baba Yaga.

This is the first Orson Scott Card book I've read, and I love the modern day magic aspect of the book, how magic can sometimes be around the corner. We'll see it if we're only looking for it. I loved the book from the first chapter, but felt it bogged down when Ivan was in Katerina's time. Ivan, being a modern day man, has no idea how to fight with a sword. Though he was an athlete his body wasn't developed with huge muscles like men in her time. His obvious lack of knowledge about the simplest manners and customs and the fact that he had no qualms about wrapping a woman's garment around himself to hide his nakedness at one point. All these things make Ivan seem to be weak and stupid by the standards of her time. And Katerina had no problem making him know it.

But when they travel to Ivan's time, it's Katerina's turn to be wide eyed and unsure, thus making her less the shrew she had been in her own time and more sympathetic to how Ivan must've felt. It was at this point that the story became interesting once again and I simply had to finish it.

I give the book a solid four stars. It's a creative take on classic fairy tales and an enjoyable read that I could simply curl up with. I really appreciated how Card was realistic with how a modern man would be perceived out of his own time, the things he'd have to deal with and the questions he'd have. The romance between Ivan and Katerina was developed slowly and deftly, and sometimes that can annoy me, but Card did it very well.

I'm not sure what I'll read next, but I think it will likely be something pretty mindless before tackling something like Austen or Frank Herbert.