Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire

Book: Mirror Mirror

Author: Gregory Maguire

Rating: 3 out of 5 apples

First Paragraph: From the arable river lands to the south, the approach to Montefiore appears a sequence of relaxed hills. In the late spring, when the puckers of red poppy blossom are scattered against the green of the season, it can look like so much washing, like mounds of Persian silk and Florentine brocade lightly tossed in heaps. Each successive rise takes on a new color, indefinably more fervent, an aspect of distance and time stained by the shadows of clouds, or bleached when the sun takes a certain position.


Review: I enjoyed Maguire's other books, but Mirror Mirror did not fulfill me as the others did. Maybe it was because I felt like his writing of the Borgias was mediocre at best. Maybe my expectations were too great. I felt like I could have gotten the same psyche of the evil family if I had just read a non-fiction book. What disappointed me most was how this book actually did read more like a fairy tale than anything. The cottage suddenly forming in the woods was way too fantasical as well as the men of stone taking place. If you are going to put real people in a book about a fantasy novel then keep the book in the real world. Was the house and its terrain supposed to be believed as so remote from reality that magic existed?

The dumb innocent girl. The protective father. The coniving older beauty queen. The crazy warlord. And then the seven stone men. Or, possibly eight if you count the dog. Why were they of the earth? Are we to believe that the land is so plentiful here that men pop out of the earth? I don't know. It sounds like a fairy tale to me.