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A review by liralen
Ogre Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
3.0
Three and a half stars, possibly to be rounded up to four at some point. Ogre Enchanted is something of a prequel for Ella Enchanted, with a small handful of overlapping characters. Our heroine is Evie, a healer...whom the fairy Lucinda turns into an Ogre after Evie rejects a marriage proposal. Evie has two months to receive, and accept, another marriage proposal, or she'll be an ogre forever (shades of Shrek?).
It's high energy, with a voice (unsurprisingly) similar to the one in Ella Enchanted, so it makes for a lot of fun. Evie is young, but she's focussed, and her actions come with real consequences.
I'm going with three stars rather than four because of the meat sticks and because of the eventual love interest (the latter of which I won't spoil). Oh, and because of the plague outcome. The meat sticks (jerky, basically, as far as I can tell) felt too convenient for me—Evie seems to find easy supplies of them wherever she goes, ensuring that she and her ogre crew (would I date myself if I said 'posse'?) can avoid violence. Too convenient that Evie seemingly get as much meat as she wants without the people she steals from feeling the pinch; too convenient that the ogres care where the meat comes from (or how they can find it themselves) as long as she collects it for them. The plague just feels a little unfinished—like, we know how many people in the palace died, but what about the townsfolk? Sounds like there's a huge number of deaths that are just skated over, and I expect there'd be farther-reaching consequences than are mentioned. And then the eventual love interest...sure, okay, except I end up knowing virtually nothing about them. Is that the point? Maybe not.
Anyway. None of this is to suggest that I didn't get a huge kick out of the book—am thrilled, really, to return to the world of Ella Enchanted. But really, I want to talk about Lucinda.
Oh, Lucinda. The evil fairy who thinks she's good. What's so interesting to me here is the role she plays and the real-world comparisons one can draw. Lucinda's role in this book is to punish a girl for not blindly saying 'yes' to any boy or man who might want to marry her. It doesn't matter if Evie is in love; it wouldn't matter if she found her suitor to be utterly repugnant, or if her suitor was abusive. She doesn't get to choose. Evie works it out, in her way...but Lucinda still wins the day. Don't let's forget the woman who is forced to marry a scoundrel because of Lucinda's pressure...
Surely I am not the only one to think this is quite a topical...topic...and that a middle-school student somewhere should rant about Lucinda and women's rights in a book report...?
It's high energy, with a voice (unsurprisingly) similar to the one in Ella Enchanted, so it makes for a lot of fun. Evie is young, but she's focussed, and her actions come with real consequences.
I'm going with three stars rather than four because of the meat sticks and because of the eventual love interest (the latter of which I won't spoil). Oh, and because of the plague outcome. The meat sticks (jerky, basically, as far as I can tell) felt too convenient for me—Evie seems to find easy supplies of them wherever she goes, ensuring that she and her ogre crew (would I date myself if I said 'posse'?) can avoid violence. Too convenient that Evie seemingly get as much meat as she wants without the people she steals from feeling the pinch; too convenient that the ogres care where the meat comes from (or how they can find it themselves) as long as she collects it for them. The plague just feels a little unfinished—like, we know how many people in the palace died, but what about the townsfolk? Sounds like there's a huge number of deaths that are just skated over, and I expect there'd be farther-reaching consequences than are mentioned. And then the eventual love interest...sure, okay, except I end up knowing virtually nothing about them. Is that the point? Maybe not.
Anyway. None of this is to suggest that I didn't get a huge kick out of the book—am thrilled, really, to return to the world of Ella Enchanted. But really, I want to talk about Lucinda.
Oh, Lucinda. The evil fairy who thinks she's good. What's so interesting to me here is the role she plays and the real-world comparisons one can draw. Lucinda's role in this book is to punish a girl for not blindly saying 'yes' to any boy or man who might want to marry her. It doesn't matter if Evie is in love; it wouldn't matter if she found her suitor to be utterly repugnant, or if her suitor was abusive. She doesn't get to choose. Evie works it out, in her way...but Lucinda still wins the day. Don't let's forget the woman who is forced to marry a scoundrel because of Lucinda's pressure...
Surely I am not the only one to think this is quite a topical...topic...and that a middle-school student somewhere should rant about Lucinda and women's rights in a book report...?