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Review Archive
BOOKS
Enchantmentby Orson Scott Card
Del Rey; New York, NY; 387 pgs; Hardcover; $25.00
Have you ever wondered what happens after Happily Ever After? The days that follow after the brave and stalwart Knight has ridden off into the sunset with the Princess of unsurpassable beauty? Pondered on those intangible moments that we know exist somewhere past the last page but to which we will never be privy? Breathe a long sigh of relief for, at last, the wait is over.
Orson Scott Card's Enchantment takes us beyond the cursive scrawl of "The End" that normally bars our way, past the famous folklore kisses, past everything we've come to know of classic folk tales, and on into a realm that will open your tearducts even as it opens your eyes.
Enchantment is the story of Ivan, a Russian Jew transplanted at the age of 10 to western New York. Since having left the Ukraine, Ivan has been pestered and plagued by a memory from his childhood: A mysterious chasm in the Russian countryside filled with leaves, and a pedestal in the middle upon which a beautiful woman slept. He had fled in tears. Years later Ivan returns to the Ukraine to finish up his dissertation, he feels pulled to that mysterious clearing in the woods. After managing to keep an exceptionally intelligent bear at bay, he makes his way to the pedestal and kisses the beautiful girl. And this is the first 50 pages.
The fairy tale becomes reality for Ivan. Hand in hand with the Sleeping Beauty Katerina, Ivan crosses a bridge that takes him a thousand years into the past to the small kingdom of Taina where every manner and mode of danger awaits. Deceit, betrayal, murder, magic, politics, marriage, love, and (last but most certainly not least) the black witch Baba Yaga, who is the source of it all. Ivan is not so blind during his adventures that he cannot realize he is, in fact, living a folk tale but on much different terms than he could ever have guessed.
Although the tale of Sleeping Beauty is referred to throughout the bok, Enchantment is so much more than merely Sleeping Beauty with a modern twist. It answers the question of anachronistic love between a temporally displaced couple. It feels like a cross between Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and the English tale of Jack and the Beanstalk with an added splash of two-way time travel. This is a compelling and vibrant story that turns classic ideas on their heads, written by a true master. Every fan of Fantasy, of Card, or of solid storytelling will consider it priority reading.
(Originally published in Realms of Fantasy magazine, June 1999.)
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