Book of a Thousand Days in Into the Forest

May 25, 2011 Cara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, 2020, fairy-tales, e-book, recommended-to-me, favorites

Do you guys know that feeling when you just have finished an astonishingly excellent book? You feel full of life and understanding. It's why as readers we come back and back again and hope this will be the book that gives us that exhilaration. I guess it's akin to a literary high. This book did that for me and more. It deserves more than the five star rating.

Let's see if I'll be able to give a concise review without confusing people. This story is loosely based on an obscure Grimm fairy tale ( Do you guys know that feeling when you just have finished an astonishingly excellent book? You feel full of life and understanding. It's why as readers we come back and back again and hope this will be the book that gives us that exhilaration. I guess it's akin to a literary high. This book did that for me and more. It deserves more than the five star rating.

Let's see if I'll be able to give a concise review without confusing people. This story is loosely based on an obscure Grimm fairy tale (Hale mentions which one it is at the end of the book). The premise is that Lady Saren will be locked up in a tower for seven years because she will not marry Lord Khashar. Lady Saren takes Dashti who oddly doesn't mind this arrangement. She comes from a harsh background and the guarantee of having food for seven straight years while serving someone of royal blood? It seems like the gods have smiled upon her. Things start to look not so rosy anymore though, and Dashti and Lady Saren will be caught in a web of lies that will lead to an adventure neither of them could have seen coming.

The strongest point of the book for me was the character of Dashti. She is resilient, funny, caring, and loyal to a fault. The refreshing aspect about her is that she is definitely not your typical flawlessly pretty character. It's her spirit that brings forth her beauty, and that may sound cheesy but it's true. Like any other character she has her shortfalls, but comes to realize how stunted her view of things was. The author does an excellent job of weaving in the Mongolian setting and customs so the reader feels as if this is a real place. Since this is written in journal form we really get the mood Dashti's in and the progression of her and Saren's growth. Throughout we see some illustrations that aid in the storytelling. I imagine this would be a great story to read out loud. I LOVED Khan Tegus, and that's all I have to say about him because anything else I would say wouldn't even come close to describing his wonderfulness.

Shannon Hale has permanently become one of my favorite authors, she was already but now she is cemented, written in black sharpie, engraved permanent. Hale is more than an author, she is a bona fide storyteller.

I will have to retire from this review before I totally botch it up, but I want to conclude that the characters are lovely, the story enchanting, and displays the power of the written word. ...more

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Jan 29, 2013 The Winter Rose rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: middle-grade, young-adult

In "Book of a Thousand Days", author Shannon Hale presents us with an interesting story about Dashti the lady's maid through her diary. Based off of the obscure fairy tale, "Maid Maleen", the tale follows Dashti and her lady, Saren as they are imprisoned for three years in a tower and later how they escape and seek to start over.

It is a very interesting premise and the main character of Dashti is incredibly compelling, which is important if the story is in a diary format. However, I felt that th ...more

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