Fairest

Gail Carson Levine

Summary:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to be pretty...

Aza’s singing is the fairest in the all the land, and the most unusual. She can ‘throw’ her voice so it seems to come from anywhere. But singing is only one of the two qualities prized in the Kingdom of Ayortha. Aza doesn’t possess the other: beauty. Not even close. She’s hidden in the shadows in her parents’ inn, but when she becomes lady-in-waiting to the new queen, she has to step into the light – especially when the queen demands a dangerous favor. A magic mirror, a charming prince, a jealous queen, palace intrigue, and and injured king twine into a maze that Aza must penetrate to save herself and her beloved kingdom.

In One Word: Beautiful

Plot:

It’s official: Gail Carson Levine is a genius at fairytale retellings. In this book she manages to capture the essence of Snow White, but put a modern and relatable spin on it. Her stories are a little darker than your average middle-grade book, but that’s what I like about them, and they’ll never fall in the category of average anyway. I enjoyed every second of reading this, I liked that it has a positive message about how you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover and all, without ever becoming preachy, or making it sound easy to accept yourself fully. I loved the writing, simply because I can’t really remember what the writing was like, I was too wrapped up in the story to take much notice.

Characters:

The characters in this book are incredibly complex and interesting. Our main character, Aza, is extremely relatable (I’m pretty sure everyone’s had those days where they look in the mirror and go: ‘I’m possibly half-ogre’...and were serious about it). I really liked how the author handled the character development with her: she doesn’t end up perfect, or perfectly happy, but it’s okay. I also really liked Prince Ijori, who is probably what every girl should hope for in a guy, without being too unrealistic. The antagonist, queen Ivi, is probably the most interesting of the characters. You don’t know whether to hate or sympathize with her. Overall all the characters are great, they go through significant development without it being too unrealistic and the fairytale characters (ogres, elves etc) are very well handled.

Who should read this:

10+, there’s no objectionable content in this book, and I think it will spread a positive message, so I suggest this for any young girl (or boy). If you’ve read Ella Enchanted and liked it, then I definitely suggest this one (some of the characters from it make an appearance!). If you don’t like childrens’ books, or fairytale-retellings, then don’t read this one. However I feel like this book can appeal to all ages and has a universal message.

My rating:

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I couldn’t put it down. I also really liked that, while this could’ve been extremely similar to Ella Enchanted, it wasn’t. I only thought about EE when some of the characters made an appearance. 5/5

Quote:

Voices and faces aren’t manifestations of good or bad.