Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

East
by Edith Pattou
During the holidays, we spent much of our time reading books, catching up on my one-book-a-month goal. Although I spent most of my break digesting some books on postmodern theory and archiving (non-related), this book, I mostly devoured on the flight back from Michigan; Rebecca had read it before me during the flight to Michigan.

Again, this is another book we had picked up per Melissa's recommendation; one day it will be my goal to recommend a book to her that she hasn't read yet. But for now, we read East and really loved it - we even plan on including this book in our collection someday. We definitely need more bookshelves.

I was a bit hesitant to get into East because Rebecca wasn't sure I was going to appreciate all the magic in the book. She knows that I have a strong distaste for authors who use magic as an easy literary 'out' for solving the characters' problems without appropriately defining the characteristics of magic within the world that was created. That isn't the case for East at all - it was well built and well arranged how magic fit into this world.

The main character was very endearing and I had a very difficult time putting down this book for any short period of time. Well written, I quite enjoyed myself.

But since no book is perfect, I do have one comment: it slightly bothered me how unhistorical this book was in the feel of the world during the 1500s. I understand that this was a "magical" version of our universe, but ever since I read Doomsday Book, I have become more critical of books which the authors haven't spent the appropriate research time to develop an accurate picture of the misery and the different circumstances that people 500 years ago lived in. Connie Willis did a fantastic job in her book, Edith Pattou should have taken more care of it. But despite questioning the gritty nature of the world, I really enjoyed her retelling of this fairy tale - definitely well done.