Enchantment by Orson Scott Card

To prove to my friend K--- that yes, I do actually like some books. 

Spoilers ahead

There's something magical about fairy tales. It's more than just magical elements - though they certainly have those - but that they are a kind of magic, the way they seep into our consciousness, wind themselves around the thread of our thoughts, situate themselves so deeply in our collective cultural soul that we can hardly tell where they end and we begin. The stories we collectively tell have power: they shape us, make, create, and recreate us. In a sense, they are us - as has been said, what are we other than the stories we tell ourselves? 

Anyway. 

That's a long, somewhat pretentious intro to say that I really, really like OSC's Sleeping Beauty retelling, Enchantment. Like Princess Bride before it, it has a little bit of everything: bears, witches, true love, time travel, medieval[1] Russia, linguistics. 

Linguistics is not a terribly sexy major; it doesn't surface in pop-culture all that often. So to have a main character (Ivan) who is not only a linguistics grad student but then uses his snazzy and seemingly-useless-other-than-to-write-a-dissertation knowledge of Old Church Slavonic to alleviate the trials of time-travel to and from the medieval[2] Russian peasant village? Incredible. (As a side note, the most recent linguistics-in-pop-culture came from the late-great-regenerate Agent Coulson in Thor: "Get somebody from linguistics down here.")

There is more than just linguistics to like, not to fret. Retold fairy tales are my jam, one of my favorite jams, in fact. As above, the stories one grows up with are powerful things; so while Sleeping Beauty was never my favorite, it is still part of me, part of my storysoul. Enchantment is so much beyond the original (which includes neither time travel nor linguists; a failing that, while tragic, we can't really fault them[3] for), but the magic remains - the essentials are still there: Gods and witches, terrifying bears, sleeping princesses (Katerina), noble men, powerful women, kingdoms that hang in the balance...

A story's not much without a most excellent villain, and Baba Yaga is superb. Here's what she has to say about truth: "Since the truth can never be known, a wise woman learns to become a connoisseur of lies, choosing only the best and most satisfying to surround herself with. I sink into my  lies like featherbeds, and they keep me safe and warm." That twisty troll logic, so masterfully crafted; I live for terrifying villains who wield magic and words as two edges of the same slicing sword. 

The secondary characters (though it's difficult to call any character in OSC novels "secondary," as they are all written so compellingly that you feel like they exist fully and completely, right down to the color of their socks and their outlook on global warming) are full of sass, which makes me cackle gleefully. Breaks up those nights of death and mayhem, y'know. Exhibit A: The priest in the medieval peasant village, who is called upon to read Ivan's war commands during the final battle with Yaga, says the following in response to concerns that it might not be quite right for a man of the cloth to participate in war[4]: "...I carry no weapons. I harm no man. I will do nothing more than read in a very loud voice, which is what I do in church." Exhibit B: Ivan's mother, who turns out to be a sort of good witch/nature magic sort of woman, says this to her husband when he thinks she's charmed Ivan and Katerina into finally taking a shine to one another: "I don't do love potions. Those are never about love, they're about coercion. And besides, they already loved each other, they were just too stupid to know it." So much glorious, snarky sass. 

Enchantment also deals with shame and what produces it, culture shock (and time shock), how free will and fate work together (or not), how love buds and grows and changes, what makes a man, how to accept your weakness and strengths, and the relevancy of gods. 

If the preceding hasn't convinced you (bears/witches/Russia/linguistics/princesses/sass), there's still hang-gliding: "…and while neither of them became brilliant at it [hang-gliding], they also didn't die, which was how you graduated from do-it-yourself hang-gliding school, Ivan figured."

Bonus points to those who spot the copious pop-culture references scattered throughout

xo, 
Devo



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[1] I cannot for the life of me spell this word. I try a new way every time, and it's always wrong. In what universe does medieval make sense? According to the OED, it's medi+ev+al: medi- as in medium, ev- as in aevum (Latin for 'age, epoch'), and -al the adjective-making suffix. Sure, fine; it's still a ridiculous spelling.

[2] Typed this word ~30 seconds ago, still have to rely on Chrome's spell check to figure it out.

[3] That is, the mists of time or where/whoever it was these stories originally came from

[4] The good book is  quite fuzzy on the subject of kneecaps, after all