The Book of a Thousand Days
by Shannon Hale

Release Date: 3rd Mar 2008
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978 0 7475 8923 5
RRP: £10.99

A beautiful and stirring fairytale of clever proportions

I don’t know why but this book managed to catch me unawares... it claims to be a fairytale, but one that doesn’t boast a handsome prince and a perfect princess trapped against her will... well, ok, it does feature a princess trapped against her will – but once you start reading this, you figure she sounds like she deserves it a little.

Dashti is a mucker, which sounds like a lovely thing to be – especially with all that singing! She is an unfortunate though, with her parents dead and her brothers having abandoned her, she has to set out for the nearest city to find employment or die. Not exactly the normal fairytale beginning and to be honest, it doesn’t ever turn into a normal fairytale – but that is no bad thing. She finds a job as a maid for Lady Saren, who is no princess but acts just as spoilt as one. Lady Saren has refused to marry according to her father’s wishes and is about to be bricked into a tower for seven years when Dashti turns up. Feeling sorry for the Lady, Dashti agrees to stay with her and be locked up in the tower (they just don’t make maids like they used to).

There’s a lot of moaning and crying, mainly on the part of Lady Saren, and a lot of praying to the Ancestors for forgiveness by Dashti – but somewhere, somehow this book draws on a gravitational pull and cloaks you in a stupefied state, so much so that even the apparently dreary account of scrubbing pots seems both magical and riveting.

There is a prince – well, a Khan, which is pretty much the same thing. And there is the inevitable “baddie”, who is cruel as well as not-so-attractive. There are shamans and strangely magical healing songs that Dashti sings. Most of all there is a twist and a happy ending, which is as it should be with fairytales.

I cannot for the life of me comprehend why I should like this book as much as I do; it seems to defy all logic – and for that simple reason, it is a must read. Hale has woven some kind of magic into this tale, and although I can’t put my finger on what it is that draws you in, for some reason it really doesn’t matter.

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