Book Review | The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

The Goose Girl – Buy this Book [US]

Rating

5 stars – a fabulous fairytale

Description

Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kilendree spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt’s incredible stories, and learning the language of the birds. Little knowing how valuable her aunt’s strange knowledge would prove to be when she grew older. From the Grimm’s fairy tale of the princess who became a goose girl before she could become a queen, Shannon Hale has woven an incredible, original and magical tale of a girl who must understand her own incredible talents before she can overcome those who wish her harm.

Why did you decide to read this book?

I discovered The Goose Girl thanks to a few fellow book bloggers who gave it rave reviews – I was lucky enough to track it down on Read it Swap it. I decided to read it now so that I can enter it into Nymeth’s Fairytale Carnival.

The Book Review

The book opens with the birth of Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, the first Crown Princess of Kilendree. In the early chapters we learn of her relationship with her aunt who tells stories of babes being born with the first word of language on their tongues and teaches Ani to talk the language of birds.

Just after her sixteenth birthday Ani learns that she has been betrothed to the Prince of Bayern and she sets out on a three month journey through the pine forests and Bayern Mountains to meet her future husband.

It is during this journey that Ani’s fate takes a turn for the worse and she finds herself in Bayern not as a Queen but as a Goose Girl.

Hale has woven a magical fairytale, with believable characters and such spell-binding descriptions that there were times I would look up from the book and be surprised to find that I wasn’t standing on a cobbled street surrounded by geese!

I’ve been thinking recently that I’d really like to find a *comfortable book*, one that I will re-read over and over and pick up when I need a book that will make me smile – and I think I’ve finally found it!

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