Marty Ross

Book 126 - Marty Ross - Sleeping Beauty

Not exactly the Brothers Grimm nor is it the original first published in the 1300s and written by Giambattista Basile instead this is similar but different to the Disney production with Aurora as the defiant young princess.

Brilliantly told as she is taken from her mother shortly after being born, by the King and Queen. They want a child but can’t have one and Aurora is there… it is as simple as that. She is taken to the royal household where she is to grow up unaware of her origins.

The mother curses the daughter saying she will die as she turns 18…and the whole kingdom will mourn the loss.

Aurora grows and falls in love with a commoner but as her 18th birthday approaches the curse suddenly becomes more relevant to everyday life.

A real fairytale full of romance…deceit…loss and most importantly what makes a family … learning their own magic to change the death curse to simply a sleeping one and in this version for a ‘mere’ ten years

Once in a while…it is worth the excursion back into your youth to rediscover what magic is

Love…unrequited love…being together and overcoming adversity…simply wonderful… (more)

Book 292 - Marty Ross - Arabian Nights Vol. 1

A retelling of the classic tales that many of us were probably told at school through reading books and cartoons.

It is very dense and very very old fashioned but then the tales are from several hundred years ago. Some well known…others…not too much.

The framing sequence is very clever but very much of its time…misogynistic…chauvinistic…and sometimes really cringeworthy.

The Sultan has been cheated on and so to ensure this doesn’t happen again…he sleeps with a new woman every night before having her head cut off so she can’t cheat on him with someone else. Eughhh…I mean…what ?

Scheherazade is summoned to the king’s bed chamber but instead of sleeping with him…she begins to tell him a story…which be one a series of stories over many many nights…1001 nights in fact.

The Sultan starts being extremely exasperated as he wants to hear the end of the story and knows that Scheherazade is only extending the stories to save herself and others around her. At dawn each morning she says to the Sultan that the story is nearly finished and that one more night should do it. It is a clever way of saving many of the locals.

As to the tales in this first volume one is very well known and it is brilliantly told…Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves…followed by a tale of a conflict between two kingdoms…one on land and one on sea before a final tale between some of the previous characters and a battle with a witch who changes her suitors into beasts of the earth and sky.

They are enthralling…they are so inventive…they are quite scary but all-in-all they are very entertaining.

Not sure if they would make me lift Vol. 2 but definitely worth dipping in to.… (more)