There is only one word to describe Gail Carson Levine’s books, and that is ‘charming’. The beauty of her writing lies in her ability to create enduringly endearing characters. And in Two Castles, she manages to weave her magic, yet again.

Strangely enough, although A Tale of Two Castles has a much younger protagonist than Ella Enchanted, I found the writing style in this book infinitely less juvenile. In Ella Enchanted, her prose is breathless and fast-paced. In Two Castles, her words have more g More...

A girl working for a Dragon to solve a mystery to save a nice ogre. Add that with the unique magical writing of Levine. Well what are you waiting for!

If that is not enough than I'll write more.

There is a great heroine who has a big heart and a vibrant spirit. Elodie (or Lodie depending who you ask) is on her own now and she wants to be a mansioner which is an actor (took me a few pages to figure that one out). She was turned away though; fate has bigger plans for her. A dragon offers her an appr More...

Update: 3.5 stars.

Two Castles is sure to please Levine's fans. Several people have asked me if it is "as good" as Ella Enchanted, Levine's best-known title and winner of a Newbery Honor. That's a hard question to answer. Ella Enchanted is such a unique and clever book that I'm not sure Levine will ever top it. It was the equivalent of a lightning strike: unexpected, dazzling, and not something that can be replicated easily. However, lucky for us, Levine is an imaginative and skilled writer who More...

Gail Carson Levine, I must say, is one of my favorite authors (at least when I need a cute, light fairytale type read). Her books are sweet, and enchanting, and just purely fun little fairytales. A Tale of Two Castles was no exception. It had that special magical quality that Levine’s other books all possess, simple in its light fairytale esque feeling, yet beautiful with its engaging writing and endearing characters, complete with an intriguing plot, at first perhaps simple, but at the end, qui More...

I liked this, but it's no Ella Enchanted. Lodie (sorry, Elodie) is from a poor family on the island of Lahnt - so poor that they don't have money for her to purchase an apprenticeship. They scrape together enough to buy her passage to Two Castles, the capital city. There, Elodie will try for a free apprenticeship, a 10-year stint, as a mansioner (what this society calls a traveling actor). During the journey, she meets Goodwife Celeste, who appears to take an interest in her well-being. On land, More...

I am pretty sure everyone who begins a book enters the book hoping to love it. With a select few books that people may start off with their fists swinging, I think the vast majority of us want to love what we read. I am not immune to this, nor do I ever want to be immune to the desire to fall for new words and worlds. Unfortunately, I ultimately did not love A Tale Of Two Castles by Gail Carson Levine, despite my hopes.

Read the rest of my review here More...

I loved this book.
It's rather hard to tackle why I liked this book, so I'll make a list:
1. I once heard someone saying that spunky heroines as an archetype are getting old, and they're right. However, The way I see it, Elodie just seemed so much more than an archetype. Although its true she acted in many ways that are typical of young fantasy heroines (outspoken, brave, smart) these features just don't outweigh the other aspects of her personality, most notably, her love of acting and her vivid More...

Oh, Gail Carson Levine. She’s a super classy person—have you seen her Goodreads profile? She doesn’t even review books she didn’t enjoy, because she doesn’t want to add to all the petty snarky shit that’s in the world.

I… am not that classy.

Fortunately, A Tale of Two Castles doesn’t fall under the category of “Books I didn’t enjoy.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t necessarily fall under the category of “Books I did enjoy.”

It’s solidly in my “Well… this was certainly a book” category.

Because yes. Yes it More...

My granddaughter Juliane lent me this fairytale. I have always liked Gail Carson Levine's stories, and this one is just as well written and creative as others I've read. I actually wish it had been written for an older audience; I would have liked it even more. Young 13-year-old Elodie leaves her small town and loving parents to come to the ruling city and apprentice to a trade. She'd like to be a Mansioner--an actress who mansions myth and story, though her parents have instructed her to try fo More...

With a nod to Puss in Boots, Gail Carson Levine has written another brilliant tale of fairytale proportions. Elodie has traveled far from her home island in order to become an apprentice in the city with two castles (the king's castle and the ogre's castle). However, due to a new law Elodie cannot in fact become an apprentice without paying the master. And seeing how Elodie only had enough money for her passage and a copper (which a cat with white boot-like markings stole on her first day there) More...

I am always excited to read a new Gail Carson Levine book. Ella Enchanted is among my all time favorite books. I have yet to find one of Mrs. Levine's books I love as much. A Tale of Two Castles comes close however.

Elodie (I really like that name) leaves home to become an apprentice mansioner, otherwise known as an actress (I am confused as to why actress was replaced with some made up word, it actually got a tad annoying to me) and ends up being an assistant to Mastress Meenore, a benevolent dr More...

I read this as sort of a palet-cleanser after the two heavy history books I just plowed through. I really liked both of them, but this one, which I finished in less than a day, was really very refreshing.

Having borrowed it from the library on my Kindle, I didn't realize it was a young adult book. I also didn't know the author was, apparently, a famous writer of young adult books. I knew nothing going into it and therefore ejoyed it very much. It reminded me of the fantasy novels I read in the 80 More...

Wasn't sure what I was expecting from this book, but it was better than I expected. Apparently I'm the only person in the world who never read Ella Enchanted, so I read this without associating it with that.

This is the tale of a young girl setting out on her first adventure with the dream of becoming a mansioner (actor) in the big city of Two Castles. Of course that doesn't work out as planned and she is instead taken in by a dragon and soon finds herself trying to solve the mystery of a missing More...

A Tale of Two Castles

This story of a young girl on an amazing adventure is a fun and exciting one. It is written by Gail Carson Levine just last year and is nicely written. However, it was written for girls younger than I, and I didn't like it very much because it was too easy, but the originality of this story, based in the midevil times, really was great.

Elodie is a 12 year old girl who hopes to become an actress when she moves to the country Two Castles, and Island so named because of the two More...

A Tale of Two Castles is by Gail Carson Levine, a favorite author of mine (and also the author of Ella Enchanted, also reiewed on my blog). Elodie is but a poor farmers daughter with grand ambitions, to be a mansioner (Which I think is an actress). She travels to Two Castles, a town over shadowed by, you guessed it,...two castles. One is run by the greedy king and his strange daughter, the other by a feared and hated ogre. When her dreams are crushed by the mansioning leader, Elodie is taken on More...

I vividly remember reading Ella Enchanted and being absolutely floored by ... well, everything! Levine's later books, like Ever, never lived up to the perfection of EE. But here is a tale, perhaps aimed at slightly younger readers (although I was heartily grateful for the lack of the obligatory love story you get in a YA novel), that's funny, imaginative, charming, and infectious. The characters are pitch-perfect, which I really think is Levine's strong point. Lodie is the now-rather-typical str More...

This was a charming book. Lodie of Lahnt tells people she is 14, even though her mother has told her to be truthful, and she wants to be a mansioner, a sort of actor or bard, though her parents have sent her away to be apprenticed to a weaver. Basically entering the world on her own resources, like Dick Whittington or many another protaganist of a fairy tale, she finds herself as assistant to a dragon who is referred to as IT because dragons do not reveal whether they are "he's" or "she's".
The More...

Reviewed by Shannon for RexRobotReviews.com

I was excited to read this book because I really like Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted and Two Princessess of Bamarre. She generally writes of heroines overcoming obstacles and exceeding expectations. A Tale of Two Castles is no exception.

Our heroine, Elodie (or Lodie), is a poor farm girl who travels to the big city of Two Castles to become an apprentice. Her parents want her to become a weaver, but she wants to become a mansioner - an actress. Unf More...

This book starts out like a normal, fantastic Gail Carson Levine novel. A girls from the country goes off to the capital city to become an apprentice. The city is adjoined by two castles--one inhabited by a greedy king and the other by a kind but ill-thought-of ogre. She wants to be a mansionier (actress); her parents want her to be a weaver; she ends up being neither because the king has recently decided that all young people hoping to learn a trade have to pay for their apprenticeship, and our More...

What You Need To Know: This charming middle grade fantasy combines unique characters with Levine's trademark world-building skill.

Summary: Elodie is a poor farmer's daughter, who leaves her impoverished, but loving, home for the city of Two Castles. Under orders to become an apprentice weaver, Elodie instead seeks to become a mansioner, or actor. Broke, unused to city life and desperate, Elodie soon attracts the attention of Mastress Meenore, the dragon who lives in Two Castles. Meenore makes h More...

Elodie wants more than anything to be a mansioner and perform before crowds, and she leaves her farm in Lahnt to pursue an apprenticeship with the mansioners in Lepai’s capital town of Two Castles. When she gets, there, however, she learns that things are very different than they were on her farm. Cats are trained to steal and stalk ogres, people are not always to be trusted, ogres are not always to be feared, and dragons can be very prickly creatures, who never reveal their gender to anyone and More...

A Tale of Two Castles by Gail Carson Levine is due to be released on May 10 2011. Twelve-year-old Elodie journeys to become an apprentice, only to discover she cannot afford it. Suspicious town’s people, a dragon, an ogre, flighty princess, greedy king and thieves all play their parts in altering her path. Instead of apprenticing as a weaver, as her parents expect, or as a traveling actress as she desires Elodie is offered a chance to become a dragon’s assistant. The dragon teaches common sense, More...

In the book a girl named Elodie that says she is 14 years old goes on a boat to learn an apprenticeship. Her family is poor. She asks to be an apprentices as mansioner but because she is poor and can't pay is not taken. On her way to the house where she asked to be a mansioner she met a dragon. The dragon offers her to be it's helper. Elodie works for him but the ogre feels unsafe and his dog is missing so she lives in the castle for a while to search for the dog and find the thief that is putti More...

A Tale of Two Castles comes as Levine’s first completely original book after a few years of penning fairy books for the Disney Pixie Hollow line, and it does not let readers down. There are problems with the story, certainly, which one is tempted to think an editor would have suggested Levine change if she were not quite so famous, but overall the work is highly creative and engaging. Like Ella Enchanted or The Two Princesses of Bamarre, A Tale of Two Cities keeps the reader turning pages to fin More...

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At just twelve years old Elodie leaves home and sets off aboard ship to the town of Two Castles where she hopes to become a mansioner (actor). But fate has other plans for her. She instead becomes the assistant to the town dragon who is an expert in inductive and deductive reasoning. By paying close attention to her new masteress's teachings and to the world around her, can Elodie figure out who has betrayed the town ogre and poisoned the king?

Final thoug More...

This one would probably have been more fun if I weren't used to other mysteries. It's a pleasant read, but (as other have mentioned) more predictable and less complex than I'm used to in a mystery. Everything was neat and easily wrapped up in situations that should have been very, very messy. The characterization is a tad shallow, though I basically liked Elodie and Meenore. The story did the characters a disservice, perhaps, when it cutified the dragon and the ogre to the point that the reader More...

Previously I had read Levine's book Fairest and really did not enjoy it. A number of people told me to give Levine another chance, so when I saw this book up at NetGalley.com I decided to give it a read. It was an okay book. While I liked it a little better than Fairest I still thought it was pretty boring, that the plot was over-simplified, and the characters very two-dimensional.

Elodie is twelve years old and is sent to the city to start her apprenticeship as a weaver. Of course Elodie has ide More...

Being high in reading lately..Thus the fast read..

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Have you ever watch a pressure cooker works? If yes, then you`ll know that it`ll heat slowly, building up pressure as it went to tenderize the meat. Until when it reach the right pressure, the cooker will whistled, releasing just enough air to stop it from exploding..And that`s what my thought about this one..

Have been a GCL`s fan since I`ve read her first book, Ella Enchanted. And since,Fairest,The Fairy's Return and Other Princess Tale More...