age: children's/YA
rating: 4/8 tentacles
After their mother’s death, twelve princesses are forced into a strict mourning period by their distant father, the King. Dancing is their only solace in this dark time, but their father catches them and berates them for insulting the memory of their mother with what appears to be celebration. When the girls discover a magical secret passage that leads them to a hidden room of enchantment deep inside their old castle, they thrill at this solution to their boredom and grief: here they can dance to their heart’s content without the knowledge of the king. Keeper, the mysterious guardian of the princesses’ new found ballroom, sparks the girls’ suspicion as he grows colder and more controlling with every visit and the princesses wonder if they might have been better off never discovering the room at all.
Entwined is based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, and still contains many fairy tale like elements: repetition, a Good protagonist versus a force of evil, poverty, royalty, magic and enchantments, etc. Heather Dixon’s writing is light and whimsical and I found the novel mildly enjoyable, though I did feel it was a bit young. Entwined seems mis-categorized as a young adult novel. It would be much more accurately represented as a book for children. In fact, as I read, I kept trying to picture it as a Disney movie.
The portrayal of dance in Entwined—or rather, the portrayal of the sisters’ relationship to dance—struck me as off-putting. Every time protagonist Azalea felt the slightest bit stressed she said to herself, “I know! I’ll just do a complicated curtsy or a fancy dance move and then I’ll feel all better!” And then Dixon would proceed to explain Azalea’s precise motions in great detail using dance terminology. This level of detail seems self-indulgent. Knowing the specifics of all of Azalea’s movements did nothing to further the story and I still couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing. I must conclude that the author put the information in only to display her own great knowledge of curtsies and dance. Dancing was mentioned by the sisters with almost religious reverence and this exaggeration made their interest seem overwrought to the point of ridiculousness. This is why I kept trying to imagine the story as a Disney movie: to see if things would seem so ridiculous if they were in a musical cartoon format. They did. I wish Dixon had used more of a fairy ring type representation of dance: the feverish frenzied spell of it. I wanted the wild ecstasy of Yeats’s fae.
I liked some of the characters, mostly Bramble (for her spunk) and Clover (for her shyness). Azalea was all right, a bit wishy-washy. Bradford was bland and I got sick of hearing about his rumpled hair. I liked Fairweller. Less so when I found out he had a mustache and I couldn’t get the image of those creepy pre-pubescent lip caterpillars out of my head. I enjoyed the magic segments, though I wish Dixon could have delved a little deeper into the cold, twisting, darkness of enchantment (a la Lev Grossman). The Keeper was sufficiently smooth and eerie and I couldn’t shake the impression that he would make a wonderful Sailor Moon villain.
I recommend this to anyone looking for some light, youthful whimsy with a splash of Disney-esque fairy magic.
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