TALE: Rapunzel
AUTHOR: Cameron Dokey
ALSO BY AUTHOR: The Storyteller's Daughter, Beauty Sleep, Sunlight and Shadow, Before Midnight, Belle, Wild Orchid, Winter's Child, The World Above
Golden is a many-layered retelling with interesting, if a bit shallow, characters. We've got the sorceress Melisande, who's not actually an evil woman. We've got Rapunzel, who's totally bald. We've got the tinker, Mr. Jones, and his young assistant Harry. A sickness eventually falls upon the nearby town and Rapunzel and Melisande must flee. They're aided by Mr. Jones and Harry, and along the way, Melisande tells Rapunzel about her actual daughter, Rue, who's trapped in a tower by a wizard's curse that honestly makes no sense. (Melisande bought Rue a hair ribbon that she wanted and because some other little girl wanted a ribbon but wasn't able to have it, the wizard cursed Melisande and Rue. I dunno. It makes no sense.) So Rapunzel has to find a way to break the spell on Rue, because Melisande can't. There's a bit of Cyrano action with a prince, who falls in love with Rapunzel's voice and Rue's image. Rue, by the way, has the typical Rapunzel look. There's some jealousy with Harry, who loves Rapunzel, but Rapunzel catches him being blinded by Rue's beauty and gets jealous, and Harry catches her talking to Prince Alex and gets jealous yadda yadda. Eventually, it all works out. Rue, now called Rapunzel, agrees to marry Prince Alex and the spell is broken. Rapunzel, who chooses the name Susan, marries Harry and never grows any hair. Oh, and Mr. Jones is her dad.
It's light fare. It's actually rather annoying because there's so much room for character development and you never really get any. You get pages and pages of what feels like the same stuff repeated. This story could easily be condensed into your typical few-page fairy tale, which really doesn't say much for the book, because it's supposed to be better than a brief tale. Instead, it makes you want the brief version.
But it's still worth the quick read that it is, because, hey, bald Rapunzel. She's pretty fun.
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