Book of a Thousand Days

Title: Book of a Thousand Days
Author: Shannon Hale
Rating: B-

Being a HUGE fan of Ms. Hale's Goose Girl series, I had extremely high expectations for her newest book, Book of a Thousand Days.

Book of a Thousand Days is the diary of a simple peasant girl, Dashti, who accepts a position as maid to an unruly princess. After completely an extensive training, Dashti begins her service only to join her princess for a seven-year imprisonment in a tower due to the princess's refusal of her arranged marriage. Through the course of the book, the princess's true love often comes to comfort her; however, at the Princess's command, Dashti poses as the Princess...and secretly fall in love with him herself! Eventually, Dashti and the Princess escape to a war-torn world... now Dashti and the Princess must stop the evil forces and journey to meet "their" beloved Prince.

The Good: The last 100-pages are pure ecstasy! The creative manner in which Dashti overcomes the evil forces is reminiscent of Goose Girl, and nothing but pure joy. In fact, it would be hard for me to think of a better way to end this story.

The Bad: Perhaps the diary/journal format is not Ms Hale's strong point. This diary read much like my own...a whole lot of nothing happening...day after day after day! I don't know that I would really recommend this books to teens...the first 200-pages where so slow and hard to get through, that I doubt many teens would put the effort into reaching the exciting conclusion. I also found the whining of the Princess (and Dashti's acceptance of her whining) more than a little annoying. This is definitely no Goose Girl...