Diane Zahler

For years, a certain king hoped for a son to inherit his crown. As each successive daughter is born, the king became angrier with his wife for her failure to produce an heir. The queen dies when Zita, the thirteenth daughter, is born. Unable to bear the child’s presence, the king sends her to live with the house servants. So, from a young age, Zita assists the cook and helps with other household chores. One day, when Zita is seven, Cook lets it slip that Zita is a princess. After this, Zita begins paying close attention to her father and her twelve sisters who knew about her birth. When the princesses discover a hidden dumbwaiter that leads from their bedroom to the kitchen’s pantry, Zita begins spending every Sunday night with her sisters in their room. After a while, Zita notices her princesses’ tattered dancing slippers. Something is making them so exhausted that, one-by-one, they begin to fall ill. One night at midnight, Zita, Breckin, the king’s stable boy and Zita’s friend, and Milek, Breckin’s soldier brother, follow the twelve sisters down the dumbwaiter into the bowels of the castle. They find an enchanted world where the princesses are forced to dance for hours. This unrelenting scene repeats itself every night. Zita steals some stationary from her father and writes letters in his name soliciting help from princes in the neighboring kingdoms. The king finds her closing the letters with the royal seal and throws them into the fire. In desperation, Zita, Breckin, and Milek turn to an old witch, who lives in an enchanted cottage in the king’s forest, for help. They discover that someone very close to the princesses is to blame for the enchantment and manage to break the spell before it is too late.
©2024 Kathy Maxwell at https://bookskidslike.com… (mehr)

I am a sucker for kids' books set in the middle ages, and I find the terrifying stories of plague times fascinating. I really enjoyed this one -- the setting is unusual, spanning Norway, Frisia, France and England. the characters are believable, interesting and likeable. I loved the LGBTQ representation, and it seemed solid on most details. I do feel like there was rather a lot of new clothing that miraculously fits and an odd notion that guests of the Pope in Avignon would not wear/bring their eating knives to dinner, but I'm willing to believe that these were things the author researched. It was highly adventurous -- from ship to witches to wreck and troubadours and wealthy princes of the church, but it was also very emotionally satisfying. The book really shines as Rype begins to process her trauma, and as the world wavers between overwhelming grief and fear and the need to live and continue on.

Advanced Reader's Copy provided by Edelweiss… (mehr)

A traumatized young Norwegian girl is discovered by English sailors and taken aboard. Mute at first, the girl - they call her Rype - slowly begins to learn their language and communicate, especially with the shipmaster's son, Owen. But the plague that killed off everyone in her village is on the ship as well, and Rype and Owen go ashore when the sailors turn on them after the death of his father, and try to make their way back to Owen's home together. Northern ports are closed, so they journey south through France toward Marseilles. Along the way, they meet up with troubadors Raymond and Jacme, and Jacme's twin sister, troubaritz Ysabella. They entertain their way through cities and towns, sometimes escaping danger, other times being sheltered in abbeys or palaces. Although Owen wants to bring Rype home with him as a sister - assuming his mother and younger sister Alice are still alive - but Rype eventually realizes she loves the life of a troubaritz, and decides to stay with Ysabella and Raymond. In a sweet coda years later, Rype and Owen are reunited.

For a novel pervaded by the horrors of death, Rype's story is ultimately one of survival and hope.

See also: The Book of Boy

Quotes

Everybody died; how could I have forgotten that? How stupid, to love someone - anyone - who would suffer unbearably and then die. (28)

It doesn't take long for people to turn on one another....Mama says people must always have someone to blame. (33)

"We have nothing, but we have no choice. So whatever happens happens, and we will simply do our best." (Owen to Rype, 46)

"Men do not know what to do when they are not at war." (Raymond, 79)

"You have such a funny way of looking at things...Everything is new for you." (Owen to Rype, 84)

I liked this idea, that people were the same everywhere. I liked the way Owen saw the world. It wasn't all new to him, for he'd traveled far, but he noticed things. He thought about them. (86)

My own burdens were so heavy, and I feared that speaking of hem would make their weight even harder to bear. (103)

Perhaps what I'd always thought bad and good meant, what I had been taught they meant, wasn't entirely true. But then what was true? How could you tell good from bad? (136)

"Reason can't reason with love" (Owen, 138)

"...I got sick. I was afraid - I knew I would die. I knew it! Everybody died. But I lived. I didn't know why. I still don't know why." (Rype to Ysabella, 214)

""Everybody has a story....But yours is yours alone..." (Ysabella to Rype, 215)

But I had learned that was what always happened. People died, and those remaining tried to live. (254)

"There's no one else to tell us what to do anymore - no parents, no elders, no priests. We have to choose our ways ourselves." (Owen to Rype, 279)… (mehr)