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A review by mackle13
The Dream Stealer by Diana Bryan, Gregory Maguire
2.0
2.5
I picked this up because a conversation about fairy tale retelling came up in a group recently that didn't focus on the Big 20 in fairy tales, and I started looking around and came across this story about Baba Yaga. I've liked Maguire's other work, especially [b:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West|37442|Wicked The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)|Gregory Maguire|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1437733293s/37442.jpg|1479280] and [b:Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister|18943|Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister|Gregory Maguire|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1338457460s/18943.jpg|1758112], so I thought I'd give it a go.
Well - it's ok, thus the 2-star goodreads rating. It didn't have any of the depth of his other books - and some of that can be written off as it being more geared for kids, I guess, but some of it is just the writing and story were just sort of flat. I can deal with lack of depth as long as there's something of interest about the story... but it just was kinda meh, which is why it took me 3 days to get through a story barely over 100 pages.
Honestly, I'm not even sure I'd recommend it to kids, because it's kind of boring, really. It did get ok at the end, but it was a slog to get there.
Meh.
I picked this up because a conversation about fairy tale retelling came up in a group recently that didn't focus on the Big 20 in fairy tales, and I started looking around and came across this story about Baba Yaga. I've liked Maguire's other work, especially [b:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West|37442|Wicked The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)|Gregory Maguire|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1437733293s/37442.jpg|1479280] and [b:Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister|18943|Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister|Gregory Maguire|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1338457460s/18943.jpg|1758112], so I thought I'd give it a go.
Well - it's ok, thus the 2-star goodreads rating. It didn't have any of the depth of his other books - and some of that can be written off as it being more geared for kids, I guess, but some of it is just the writing and story were just sort of flat. I can deal with lack of depth as long as there's something of interest about the story... but it just was kinda meh, which is why it took me 3 days to get through a story barely over 100 pages.
Honestly, I'm not even sure I'd recommend it to kids, because it's kind of boring, really. It did get ok at the end, but it was a slog to get there.
Meh.