Spindle's End

So beautiful! Deep, rich, vibrant world building & a gorgeous tale. It was cozy and comforting. What a beautiful rich fairytale with so many wonderful relationships in it. I loved that it wasn’t just a romance. It was mother/daughter, best friends, adopted/found families, loyal animals & subjects… so much love & the power it holds. What a wonderful, magical, & enchanted tale!

I've read this book maybe 6 times and it seems to get better every time! What a great story. It is divided into several parts and shifts from Katriona to Rosie. The end is quite satisfying. I look forward to reading itagain in a few years.

Robin McKinley is very good at taking a well-known story and giving it a different spin (pun not intended). Spindle's End takes Sleeping Beauty a direction I haven't seen before while still maintaining the intrinsic appeal of the original concept.As with "Beauty", the characters are well defined and easy to relate to. The role of magic in the story is creative and presented in an interesting way.The reason I'm giving 4 stars instead of 5 is the rather awkward climax. There's a rushed feeling to it and the clear narration of the rest of the book is missing. This doesn't mean it's bad, just not quite up the the standard of the rest of the story.

This is absolutely my favorite book of all time - I reread it a few times a year. As the description states, it's basically a retelling of the story of Sleeping Beauty, but to write it off as an adaptation does it such an injustice it feels cheap to describe the book as just a retelling.Robin McKinley's strength is in creating a realistically developed and described world, and the one she creates here lives and breathes on its own. As you read, you find yourself believing all the fantastic details - the magic dust that settles over the land and must be scourged clean on a regular basis, the speech of animals and what they are interest in, the commonality of faeries and the emergence of child-magic, why spindle ends become carved works of art... She has created a world that feels just as real as ours, with amazing little details that leap off the page to make it a believable setting for a tale that, in the end, is as familiar even as it is reinterpreted.The book really feels divided into two parts: while the whole book is written in third-person, the first part more or less follows the story of Katriona, and the second part is more focused on Rosie. The whole connected story tells of the cursed princess, the efforts Katriona and her aunt go to hide her, and later, as the truth emerges, how Rosie and her best friend Peony must work together to overcome the curse. The plot weaves tight around fantastically written details and characters, and the whole story moves seamlessly from featuring Katriona as a main character to switching over to following Rosie as she comes of age and determines how to deal with her dual nature - Rosie, the village girl, and the cursed princess the whole country hopes will triumph.It's beautifully written, tightly plotted, and has a little bit of everything: adventure, fantasy, romance, mystery... I recommend it for anyone with even a modicum of interest in it. It's well worth reading, and I find myself coming back to it again and again, appreciating it more each time.

Everyone knows the story. A royal couple, after years of longing, have a beautiful baby girl. All their subjects and the fairies and woodland creatures come to celebrate the birth. But one evil fairy, miffed that her invitation didn't come, storms the party and curses the baby to prick her finger and fall asleep forever.In this imaginative retelling, Robin McKinley gives an alternative story. When the evil fairy, Pernicia, casts her spell, a fairy named Katriona is there. She won the lottery in her distant, small village to come to the name day of the new infant. She takes the baby in that moment of the curse and returns with it to her village. The trip takes weeks and the two are helped along their journey by the wild animals they encounter; the female badgers and rabbits and foxes providing the milk a baby must have.The baby, Briar-Rose, is raised by Kat and her mother. They give a story about it being the baby of a distant cousin who needs a home. Rosie grows up in the village with no idea about the royal blood she carries in her veins. Instead, she becomes a horse vet as she has the ability to talk with all the animals she encounters. It's a good life, surrounded by love and joy but has the ruse worked? Will Rosie escape the curse laid on the babe twenty-one years ago?This is a joyful book, full of spells and coincidences that turn out to push the story along. Rosie is no wilting sheltered princess. Instead she is a woman who knows her own mind and knows how to fight when it is needed. Robin McKinley has written several fairy tale retelling novels. She has won the Newberry Award for young adult fiction along with other awards. This book is recommended for fantasy readers.

a great book! I'm definitely going to read more by this author

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I love fairy tales but Sleeping beauty has always bothered me, as her character was so passive. Robin McKinley put a stop to all that. She's written characters that live, breathe, have lives worth living, and the princess is about as interesting as any princess I've ever wanted to meet. Thank you, Robin!

This book is beautifully crafted. From the refreshing take on a fairy godmother to the sparkling descriptions of an Oz-esque world, Robin McKinley shines as a writer of modern fairy tales. It takes the traditional story, and its strictures of Fate and Destiny and turns them upside down, all the while maintaining the romance, tenderness and excitement of the original. Perfect for a young and old readers alike, but particularly touching for girls of any age who are questioning how much Disney's perfect princesses really relate to them.

A good take on the sleeping beauty fairy tale, the story felt fresh, I would recommend this book for a light read. Rose is not your usuall princess and sticks to her opinions, there is also a nice twist at the end

Great story. Great read from a great author.