Wildwood Dancing

Wildwood Dancing, by Juliet Marillier

There are many mysteries within the wildwood. Jena and her sisters share the biggest of all, a fantastic secret that enables them to escape the confines of their everyday life in rural Transylvania. They have kept it hidden for nine long years.

When their father falls ill and must leave their forest home over the winter, Jena and her oldest sister Tati are left in charge. All goes well until a tragic accident allows their over bearing cousin Cezar to take control. The appearance of a mysterious young man in a black coat during their full moon revels divides sister from sister, and suddenly Jena finds herself fighting to save all she holds dear. With her constant companion Gogu by her side, she must venture to realms dark and perilous in her quest to preserve, not just those she loves, but her own independence as well.

The story is clearly a fairy tale, but one which Marillier has twisted beyond easy categorization. Jenica, the second eldest of five sisters, narrates the story, which is a good thing, because starting at about halfway through the book, I just wanted to slap her older sister, an urge which never really went away. This one was a bit of a slow starter for me - not one of the ones which grabbed me from the first chapter. On the contrary, the mass introduction of characters and names, both in Transylvania, and in the Other Kingdom put me off reading it, and only after about five chapters did I really settle into the story. This is obviously a take on the Twelve Dancing Princesses, although the initial premise is really all that they have in common. I enjoyed the building menace throughout the book, especially regarding the girls' cousin Cezar, who is kinda the archetypical domestic abuser.



Marillier is less adept at maintaining the mysteries of the book - the ending and several twists were broadcast far in advance, losing a lot of tension in terms of the "magical" problems that Jena deals with (as opposed to the "real" problems - i.e., her cousin's impending molestation and disinheritance of her, etc.). This was sort of inevitable, since the whole set up was a little intricate, and obviously required some notice before they explained it all away on the last page, but the intricacy of the premise combined with Jena's inability to decipher any the clues just gave me a headache. So rather than compelling me to solve the various parts of the mystery myself, I mostly just read in high dudgeon until it all got resolved.



To be fair, Jena does have a lot piled on her plate, and her oldest sister, as I mentioned earlier, is less than useless. Literally. There were some very lyrical parts of the book, but I never really felt swept away in either world - I didn't get a very good impression of the various attributes of each setting. However, in spite of the beginning, once Jena's story starts to take shape, the book becomes much more readable and enjoyable - it did give me a little bit of a warm fuzzy feeling, so I am not completely devoid of sympathy for true love after all.