East by Edith Pattou

This was a refreshing version of the East of the Sun, West of the Moon story. I found the characters to be well composed and believable. In other variations of this story, the mother has been portrayed as evil or as hating the daughter, as happens with so many mothers in fairy tales. But in this version the mother's actions were explained and even after she did what she did she showed remorse, and the birth direction thing, almost like a horoscope, was used very effectively in explaining the mother's passionate reactions, as she followed it like a religion.

The main character, Rose, was well done. She was a 'north born' which means she's high strung and likes to travel. I think the author did a god job in constructing her character as that personality is very much what one would expect of the heroine of this story. This personality type also explained why she would go off to help the guy. In some of the other reviews people commented that the platonic relationship lessened the connection between the main characters and while I agree with this to some extent, I also feel that for the characters to have had sex would mean something different in today's society. In antiquity women were seen as more connected to the body, but in reality would you go running off to save someone just because they had sex with you? Probably not, it's the relationship. And while sex enhances the relationship, Rose didn't know who the man was and only later made the connection that he was the bear. So while I believe that if crafted properly, the sexual aspect of the story would deepen the connection between the two, I think that the way the story was portrayed here doesn't leave much wanting.

Overall, worthwhile read.

Once Upon A Winters Night by Dennis Mckiernan

East of the Sun and West of the Moon is one of my preferred stories from mythology, and this book did it little to no justice. I didn't connect with the heroine at all and at times felt like she was trying too hard and with not enough motivation. I felt that the author was making her out to be more clever and strong than she actually was, which is annoying. I mean, we all love strong, smart, courageous heroines, and because we love them we can tell when someone doesn't fit the bill, however hard the author tries to boost the character's image in the eyes of the reader (the truth always comes through).
 
Also, there's suggested bestiality in the story, which is cool, I mean besides the fact that some people are into that, it can symbolically bring a raw, primal aspect to the story, but not in a book intended for something of a younger audience. I am not against younger people becoming familiar with what sex is, as it would be absurd to hide it from them beyond a certain age and not do them some sort of harm, but the... flavour of sexual experience they are aware of should be left to human on human until later on... if ever. This may be my inner prude coming to light, but I would be hesitant to give it to anyone younger than me for fear that they might pick up on the suggestion.
 
I didn't completely hate it because I like faeries, and I suppose I appreciate the author's attempt to incorporate faeries into the plot, what with the red caps n such, and the prince being kind of a faery himself, so I put aside the poor writing for one of my obsessions, but other than that I deem it to be a failed attempt.

I've just finished reading another retelling called East by Edith Pattou. I found that to be more successful. The story is a good one, this was just a bad version of it.

East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon by Naomi Lewis

I have just read this book and.. well the pictures are nice. Quite honestly the telling of the story is kind of choppy, to the point where you can almost feel the gaps as you're reading it, but the progression is faithful to older versions of the myth. The writing was pretty bad, but the pictures were nice. They were colourful with an attention given to detail (which maybe should've been directed to the storytelling) that almost made up for what I disliked about the book. And on top of that this fairy tale is one of my favourites so maybe I'm just being hard on it for that reason.