Hero (Woodcutter Sisters, #2; Books of Arilland, #2) in Once Upon a Time...

Sep 27, 2015 Rachmi rated it liked it

Shelves: romance, ebook, retelling-and-or-inspired-by, fantasy

2.5 stars

"Instead of batting their eyes to idiots, young girls will start taking up stick swords to slay a dragon and save the prince."

This time is Saturday's story. After I finished Enchanted I was looking forward to read this book, as I want to know the Woodcutter girl who doesn't like to go to the ball and wearing beautiful gown.

I think her adventures in this book are more interesting. I love it more than Sunday's in Enchanted. Although this book doesn't have many retelling of fairytales, at 2.5 stars

"Instead of batting their eyes to idiots, young girls will start taking up stick swords to slay a dragon and save the prince."

This time is Saturday's story. After I finished Enchanted I was looking forward to read this book, as I want to know the Woodcutter girl who doesn't like to go to the ball and wearing beautiful gown.

I think her adventures in this book are more interesting. I love it more than Sunday's in Enchanted. Although this book doesn't have many retelling of fairytales, at least not much I know, Saturday's adventure to become a hero is more appealing to me. Not to mention the fact that she is the one who rescue her hero, and also rescue the world from the evil witch. I know that Saturday is a badass heroine since I read Sunday's story, what with that ax and helping her father and brother in the wood. So it isn't surprising knowing that she's the hero the title refers to.

However, it was a bit hard for me to connect with her and other characters, especially Peregrin, her love interest. I didn't connect with her instantly, unlike with Sunday and Rumbold. I think it was mostly because she's a bit different in first few chapters than in Enchanted. Here I see her as a mopping and whinny character in the beginning of the story. I know that she wants to have her own adventures and thinking that she's the only one who doesn't have magic, but the way she keeps talking about it is a bit annoying.

There is also problem I encountered at the beginning, the flow doesn't run smoothly, in my opinion. There are things that happen at the same time with many different characters. The movement between one scene to another felt jumpy. It was like one paragraph I read one thing but then in the next paragraph another thing happens without so much description to begin with. It also happens with many characters (view spoiler), so they disappear but then pop up out of the blue at the end of the story.

All in all, as much as I enjoyed the book, I'm not that satisfied with it. I think in a way, as a full story Enchanted is still a bit better than this one.
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Sep 30, 2015 Lisa rated it really liked it

I did like Saturday's tale, but was disappointed in several aspects. After reading Enchanted, I was super excited to be able to read Saturday's story, because she was one of my favorite characters in Enchanted. However, at the beginning of Hero, Saturday really is not acting anything like the same character I had met in Enchanted. As the book proceeds, the characteristics that I like the most about Saturday (her spunk, sassiness, and outright irreverence) increase as each chapter unfolds. Anothe ...more

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May 18, 2014 Sam at A Journey Through Pages rated it it was amazing

Shelves: comfort-reads, favorites, fairytales-legends-myth-etc

Review from A Journey Through Pages

Here lies my review of the sequel to the enjoyable Enchanted. And personally, this book showed improvement in Kontis's writing, and stole my heart even more than the first.

This time around we are following Saturday, the second youngest out of the Woodcutter sisters. She is the "non-magical" one, having received only an axe from her fairy godmother as opposed to the amazing things her sisters received. Of course, this has changed since she became indestructible Review from A Journey Through Pages

Here lies my review of the sequel to the enjoyable Enchanted. And personally, this book showed improvement in Kontis's writing, and stole my heart even more than the first.

This time around we are following Saturday, the second youngest out of the Woodcutter sisters. She is the "non-magical" one, having received only an axe from her fairy godmother as opposed to the amazing things her sisters received. Of course, this has changed since she became indestructible at the end of her younger sister's adventures and it becomes obvious that she has a destiny to fulfill and until then she has to stay intact due to the logic of this world.

This time around it doesn't seem like Kontis focuses on any one fairytale and instead alludes to several while turning a few traditional fairytale tropes on their head. This time around we have a heroine saving a "prince" and it's lovely.

The writing style has shifted to fit Saturday's voice, becoming less dreamy and more practical. This especially shows in the romance in which the book doesn't even try to dress up (despite being insta-love) with drama, emotion and reasons. It presents it as "romance happens this way in fairytales, I guess we'll just go with the flow" and surprisingly this ends up working rather well and being very effective.

Where the last book suffered from Sunday feeling a little less developed, all of the characters in this one are fantastic. Saturday and Peregrine are layered characters (even without their gender-bending scenario to deal with) and all the side characters are memoriable.

I also applaud the fact that this can act as a stand-a-lone book, separate from Enchanted, though it does seem like there will be slightly more direct sequels after this one.

Even if you haven't read Enchanted or didn't feel like you enjoyed it very much, I highly recommend getting your hands on Hero. It's a book that deserves to be read by lovers of the fairytale. I also think that those who are fans of Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest books will enjoy this book as well. If Kontis continues to improve, the next book, Dearest, is going to be phenomenal.

4.5 BOOKMARKS ...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Momo (the Mome Rath) rated it it was ok

Shelves: reviewed, retelling, fantasy, pub-2013, faeries, dnf

This book was a huge let down. I adored ENCHANTED with its magical world chock full of fairy tales and was thrilled to read the sequel. HOWEVER. This sequel does not live up to any of my expectations. Maybe the bar was set pretty high after how much I loved ENCHANTED, but HERO honestly doesn’t even come close on any level to the amount of enjoyment of its predecessor.

HERO follows Saturday Woodcutter, Sunday from the first book’s next oldest kin. The non-magical sister gets a fantastical tale of This book was a huge let down. I adored ENCHANTED with its magical world chock full of fairy tales and was thrilled to read the sequel. HOWEVER. This sequel does not live up to any of my expectations. Maybe the bar was set pretty high after how much I loved ENCHANTED, but HERO honestly doesn’t even come close on any level to the amount of enjoyment of its predecessor.

HERO follows Saturday Woodcutter, Sunday from the first book’s next oldest kin. The non-magical sister gets a fantastical tale of her own: whisked away to a mountain cave inhabited by a witch, Saturday faces danger and excitement, with a touch of romance. It sounds like this story couldn’t go wrong.

My first bone of contention? Saturday. Saturday Woodcutter is not nearly as fun to read as her little sister Sunday. Whereas Sunday was whimsical and dreamy, Saturday is tomboyish and … boring. She is a generic I-wish-I-were-a-boy character that had no original spunk. Her lack of personality made reading her adventure tiresome, and I just couldn’t keep reading.

Next issue: the writing is pretty bad. Alethea Kontis excels at writing interesting dialogue. Other than that, everything gets confusing and isn’t described nearly enough -- there was never a moment where there was a beautifully painted picture of what was going on. It seemed like guesswork whenever there was any action, where this was less of a problem in ENCHANTED. The characters were what pulled you into the story and kept things interesting in addition to helping the reader find their way through the somewhat lacking prose. In HERO, where I had no connection to the main character, the writing issues were all the more apparent and unforgivable.

HERO ended up being completely dissatisfying and disappointing. I had other issues that I decided if I fully disclosed, this would turn more into a rant than review. If you’re a fan of ENCHANTED, then you probably are going to pick up this book regardless. Maybe with a bit of warning the reading experience will be more enjoyable for you.

This review is also posted on my blog Where the Mome Raths Outgrabe ...more

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