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A review by aotora
Ogre Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
2.0
I have very very mixed feelings about this book.
I love the author and I love Ella enchanted as it is one of my favourite books and I can read it over and over and over and over and never really get tired of it.
This is a prequel to that book and whilst that one is based on Cinderella, this one is based on Beauty and the beast. We get to know Ella's parents and we get to learn more about ogres and the world of Frell.
The main characters in this are okay I guess.
Evie is a healer and she is 15 years old - 15 years old okay? So when her best friend Wormy proposes to her and she rejects him Lucinda shows up and is all like: "well you broke his heart now you deserve to be punished." - so because at 15 she doesn't feel like she found true love and wants to settle with the first person that proposes to her she gets turned into an ogre. She has to find one true love and someone that would propose to her and whose proposal she would accept before she remains ogre for good. And because of that she goes to other ogres to learn how to pursuade people so she can basically force the first random handsome man she meets to propose to her. And the first man that she meets is Peter- Ella's father- who is even worse in this book then he was in Ella enchanted. He is self centered, only looks out for himself, doesn't care about Ella's mother and he is extremely selfish - and later he proposes to Eleanor just because of her status and wealth, and guess who shows up? Lucinda and she makes them not ever break any promises- so they have to marry even though Eleanor is clearly unhappy with him because she realizes that he is a self centered idiot that's only with her fot the money. But at least the book has a happy ending - Wormy and Evie get to be together and marry and have a wonderful happily ever after.
The beginning dragged on for quite a while - it took a long time to pick up but once the story did pick up it seemed to finish rather fast and abruptly.
Evie meets a band of ogres and stays with them, then she saves an elf and a giant from them learning that she is actually still a human and can fight against her urges to eat people and other living creatures- though she is perfectly fine with eating some animals. It's also heavily implied that ogres eat their food whilst it's still alive which is ... disturbing. They can also sense other's emotions. Humans also love displaying ogre heads on spikes because why not. So she meets Peter and instantly falls in love. She thinks that he loves her too - until we learn that nope, he is just a douche and the love she felt was his love for himself. She ends up saving a giant and they kill the entire band but later Peter swoops in and cuts their heads off presenting them to the king so he gets the credit and becomes a knight and later a prince.
Evie goes to the castle, she heals some people and people love her, than they suddenly hate her and are suspicious of her because of the rumors Peter started (I mean they do start believing those pretty darn fast even though she just saved half of the town from a deadly disease but okay, realistic I guess), then she goes to a ball to show that she is not treatening, then the king decides that people should fight her since she can teach them how to defeat an ogre, they fight for a while, she proposes to another man she saved and he instantly accepts so she can turn back to human just long enough that she can reject him and be turned back again because he clearly loves another woman, she then finds Wormy that Lucinda turned into a squirrel and proposes to him, he accepts and they both lived happily ever after-
The last part of the book seems to be all over the place. There are so many things happening at once and it gets so confusing. I also hate how quickly it wrapped up - there was a sense of urgency because she only had a few days left and the question of will she remain an ogre forever or become a human again was there - but instead of building the suspense and keeping the reader on edge the author chose to rush through it.
I also hated that everybody just ignored what Lucinda did and just ignored how horrible of a person she was - at least in Ella enchanted people loathed her and knew that her gifts were bad, here, only Eleanor, Mandy, Evie and Wormy show that they are displeased with what she is doing - the rest of the people just shrug it off - and she doesn't get any comeuppance, at least in Ella enchanted she got punishes in the end.
It's an okay story, but I don't think that it quite lives up to the sequel. It might be just my nostalgia goggles blinding me though.
I love the author and I love Ella enchanted as it is one of my favourite books and I can read it over and over and over and over and never really get tired of it.
This is a prequel to that book and whilst that one is based on Cinderella, this one is based on Beauty and the beast. We get to know Ella's parents and we get to learn more about ogres and the world of Frell.
The main characters in this are okay I guess.
Evie is a healer and she is 15 years old - 15 years old okay? So when her best friend Wormy proposes to her and she rejects him Lucinda shows up and is all like: "well you broke his heart now you deserve to be punished." - so because at 15 she doesn't feel like she found true love and wants to settle with the first person that proposes to her she gets turned into an ogre. She has to find one true love and someone that would propose to her and whose proposal she would accept before she remains ogre for good. And because of that she goes to other ogres to learn how to pursuade people so she can basically force the first random handsome man she meets to propose to her. And the first man that she meets is Peter- Ella's father- who is even worse in this book then he was in Ella enchanted. He is self centered, only looks out for himself, doesn't care about Ella's mother and he is extremely selfish - and later he proposes to Eleanor just because of her status and wealth, and guess who shows up? Lucinda and she makes them not ever break any promises- so they have to marry even though Eleanor is clearly unhappy with him because she realizes that he is a self centered idiot that's only with her fot the money. But at least the book has a happy ending - Wormy and Evie get to be together and marry and have a wonderful happily ever after.
The beginning dragged on for quite a while - it took a long time to pick up but once the story did pick up it seemed to finish rather fast and abruptly.
Evie meets a band of ogres and stays with them, then she saves an elf and a giant from them learning that she is actually still a human and can fight against her urges to eat people and other living creatures- though she is perfectly fine with eating some animals. It's also heavily implied that ogres eat their food whilst it's still alive which is ... disturbing. They can also sense other's emotions. Humans also love displaying ogre heads on spikes because why not. So she meets Peter and instantly falls in love. She thinks that he loves her too - until we learn that nope, he is just a douche and the love she felt was his love for himself. She ends up saving a giant and they kill the entire band but later Peter swoops in and cuts their heads off presenting them to the king so he gets the credit and becomes a knight and later a prince.
Evie goes to the castle, she heals some people and people love her, than they suddenly hate her and are suspicious of her because of the rumors Peter started (I mean they do start believing those pretty darn fast even though she just saved half of the town from a deadly disease but okay, realistic I guess), then she goes to a ball to show that she is not treatening, then the king decides that people should fight her since she can teach them how to defeat an ogre, they fight for a while, she proposes to another man she saved and he instantly accepts so she can turn back to human just long enough that she can reject him and be turned back again because he clearly loves another woman, she then finds Wormy that Lucinda turned into a squirrel and proposes to him, he accepts and they both lived happily ever after-
The last part of the book seems to be all over the place. There are so many things happening at once and it gets so confusing. I also hate how quickly it wrapped up - there was a sense of urgency because she only had a few days left and the question of will she remain an ogre forever or become a human again was there - but instead of building the suspense and keeping the reader on edge the author chose to rush through it.
I also hated that everybody just ignored what Lucinda did and just ignored how horrible of a person she was - at least in Ella enchanted people loathed her and knew that her gifts were bad, here, only Eleanor, Mandy, Evie and Wormy show that they are displeased with what she is doing - the rest of the people just shrug it off - and she doesn't get any comeuppance, at least in Ella enchanted she got punishes in the end.
It's an okay story, but I don't think that it quite lives up to the sequel. It might be just my nostalgia goggles blinding me though.