Fairest

I feel kind of bad starting the blog off on a book that is going to receive less than a three star rating, but here we are. I picked up Gail Carson Levine's Fairest because I absolutely loved Ella Enchanted - it's a five star book. I had expected Fairest to hold to a similar caliber, but was disappointed.

The story follows a young girl, named Aza (who we may know as Snow White) who believes she is ugly and has a talent for singing. Through some luck and talent, she has the opportunity to visit the royal castle where she wins over the new Queen and becomes her lady in waiting. When the king falls ill, the Queen proves disastrous in her rule and Aza finds herself running for her life.

The story is charming enough. We watch Aza grow into her own and discover her strengths and inner beauty. We follow her struggle to overcome her circumstances and eventually claim her birth right (I'm being vague here to avoid spoilers). The world itself has some enchanting elements - particularly the visit to the gnomes.

But for me, the story falls flat with the characterization of the Queen. I simply don't know what to make of her. We know that she's vain, and she goes to lengths to kill to preserve her image. And yet we also know her mind is being poisoned by the mirror, which has it's own agenda. So we don't know how much of the Queen's actions are really her own. When Aza eats the poisoned apple, the Queen becomes distraught, calling Aza her friend. She even seems confused as to what actually happened. It's the mirror that reassures her that what's done is done and right.

The Queen also seems a little air-headed. Upon her first meeting with the royal counsel, she dissolves it, finding it tiresome and boring. It would seem that she doesn't have a head for ruling. And yet she says repeatedly that she wants to be a strong queen, like those of history. It would seem she wants to put forth a solid rule for the people but simply doesn't know the right way to go about it. The people hate her for her actions, and at the end of the novel she apologizes for some of them, saying that she simply didn't understand how upsetting some of them were.

There's also the question of why the King married her. It is revealed the mirror enhanced the Queen's beauty. Is it possible the King had been mesmerized? The Queen also does not appear to love him. She flirts with several other men in the novel and goes so far as to debate her future husband should the King not recover. She bemoans his possible death only because she will not have someone to love her. She never once admits to loving him.

And yet when the King recovers he says it was the Queen's voice that led him out of the darkness and saved his life. When it is revealed to him how terrible her rule has been, he plans so that he can pass the rule onto his son and he and the Queen can go off and live in retirement. It's unclear if this decision is because the King realizes the Queen is incapable of ruling or if he feels recent events have blemished the people's trust and it would just be better to step down. Never does he have anything bad to say about his wife. He seems to be acting purely on blind love.

All that does is bring up more questions about the Queen. Is she a good person who was manipulated by a magical object? Or is she a vain and superficial woman in which the mirror brought out her worst qualities? Am I supposed to dislike her or feel sorry for her? Could she and Aza have been good friends if it hadn't been for the mirror? Would her rule have been any different without the mirror present?

The problem with this is when the main villain of a story is so ambiguous, the main conflict of the story becomes ambiguous as well. I'm not sure how to feel about Aza's conflicts with the Queen as the story progresses - again, how much is her and how much is the mirror? Aza's poisoning seems due to the mirror's influence, and yet when the mirror is destroyed, there is no clear difference in the Queen's attitude. The novel's ending, though certainly a good for Aza feels incomplete when the Queen's struggle is so unclear. Should I be happy for her? Worried for the King? Should I feel justice has been served?

I might feel different if the mirror had a larger role. It's the only clear villain in the story, and yet Aza encounters it briefly and destroys it quickly. Another area that might have helped are certain points where Aza seems in danger of falling to vanity herself, which makes her similar to the Queen and might suggest we should sympathize with her if our hero could have ended up the same. However this is never fully explored, and so I'm not sure what was intended by it.

When it's hard to understand the main characters in a story, the story itself lacks. And that's how I felt while reading this story - something was lacking. I didn't have all the information I needed to make the story exciting and engaging. It was just okay. Had the Queen's character been more clear, I'm sure I would have felt differently.