I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This review contains spoilers please read at your own risk.
Time Dancers and other Fantastical Tales by Christine E. Schulze is an anthology collection of fairytales that will stay with you long after you finish the last page. The characters will melt your heart and leave you in tears, but also hopeful at the same time.
There are water elves, curses, time-travel, magic mirrors, wars, illness, family, sacrifice, dragons, blind/deaf people, and cat-like human characters. A prince who gave up his throne to go on adventures that may or may not get him killed, an eagle with ruby and sapphire eyes, gargoyles, kelpies, and ground and earth elementals. A princess discovers that her father did listen to her wishes (more on that later), a human star, a knight with a troubled past, a girl who turns a forest into eternal autumn to save people from her evil sister. It also mentions cannibalistic mermaids that I wish we got to meet and so much more. If any of these things catch your fancy, then this is the book for you.
*Now onto some spoilers if you do not wish to read this please skip ahead to the bold part of the review.*
In Labyrinth: Heart of Stone oh, Corie. Oh, Catherine. Catherine only longs for freedom and all Corie wants is for her to be safe from him. Since her uncle managed to transfer the curse the Druids had placed on him onto Corie and so at night, he is no longer human. And Catherine realizing that he did it out of love was, ugh, I died at that point. Corie needs to exist for real.
In Autumn Falls, do not believe the blurb of the book. The blurb is all an eternal forest of autumn with two sisters yadda yadda yadda. I thought the sisters lived in the forest, but they do not. It had a sort of Snow White vibe to it and Andy, poor sweet Andy, he made me cry because he thought he and Autumn would get married, but she had to leave him to save him and his people from her sister and I want to cry just thinking about it.
In Time Dancers, Calina is all upset because she wanted a husband that was close to her age who was handsome, kind, shared the same interests as her, instead she gets Lorenzo who is twice her age (36 to her 18!) who has wrinkles showing around his eyes and she gets so mad at her father for not listening to her. Then Lorenzo gifts her a mirror (and despite what the blurb says she does not need a crystal ring to enter the mirror) that allows her to see herself dancing with a handsome prince who is her age. When she enters the mirror she discovers that Aarwyn (forgive me if I spelled the name wrong) was the one she was engaged to be married to, but the Brownies had planned an attack to get the ring, so her father found a way to time travel and brought her eighteen years into the future to protect her. When Calina realizes that it is priceless and you should read the story if only for that moment. I figured that the father knew something that Calina did not because he was so insisted on getting her and Lorenzo together, but Calina was so stubborn. Ugh, the ending was so cute I was crying.
In fact, the last three books had me in tears and wanting to go back for more. It gave me all sorts of feels.
*You can continue from here if you wish to skip the spoilers*
These stories are satisfying and make the hopeless romantic in me feel like there is hope to find a person like those characters do. Guess what? Despite everything true love will always find a way, so let us all take hope in that. I highly recommend that you read this book because it has a little something for everyone.
5 out of 5 stars (100 out of 5 stars 😉)
No comments:
Post a Comment