This is one of my favorite stories from my younger years. The sequel West, is going to be published on October 23, 2018. I absolutely had to reread East before I jumped into West. ...so here we are.
An amazon summary, "A beautiful, new edition of the beloved fantasy hailed as “the stuff of epic tale telling” (Booklist), perfect for fans of Beauty and the Beast from New York Times best-selling author Edith Pattou.
Rose has always longed for adventure, so when an enormous white bear appears one evening and makes her a mysterious offer, she accepts. In exchange for health and prosperity for her ailing family, she must live with the white bear in a distant castle. But Rose soon realizes that all isn’t as it seems. As she tries to settle into her new life, she makes a devastating mistake. Now she must choose: return to her safe and loving family or go on a dangerous quest to fix what she has broken—and perhaps lose her heart along the way. A sweeping romantic epic as timeless as any fairy tale and thrilling as only the best fantasy novels can be." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
Before I summarize, this story is told from multiple narrators. From Rose, to the bear, to her father, to her brother, to even the Troll Queen... there's a lot of different voices for the story.
Rose's Mother is seriously superstitious. She has a belief about everything, especially in regards to what direction a person is born in, is what shapes their personality. Rose's Mother has seven children; one for each direction except north, as north born babies are adventurous and in general worrisome for a mother. However, the east born child falls ill and eventually dies. Rose's Mother decides to have another child that is east born, never north. One day, while Rose's Mother & Father are out in the woods, a terrible storm hits, and during the storm, the babe comes. When the storm clears, the parents see in shock that the baby was born facing north. The Mother revolts and decides she was east born, and is very adamant about it. The father was uneasy about it, but let the child be named after east. So she is named Ebba Rose, but her father secretly calls her Nyamh.
The family lives on a farm, and Rose has tons of area to explore. When she was quite young, she went off exploring, fell down a small cliff and into a lake where she nearly drowned. Her older brother Neddy witnessed her being rescued by a white bear, but the bear did not hurt her and Neddy refused to tell anyone what actually saved her for fear their parents would worry. Since then, Rose imagined herself an invisible friend of a white bear where they would go off on many adventures together. Rose was also a very plucky child. She learned to knit, sew, and weave (but the weaving was through a series of arduous tasks for a widow in the village). One day, her elder sister became sick, the farm wasn't doing well, and a white bear shows up at their door. He speaks and tells them that if Rose comes with him, the sister will get better and their family will know riches. He gives them seven days to think about it.
Rose, of course, accepts the offer.
That's enough summary. Dun dun dunnnnnnn
The good news is, I still LOVE this book. The bad news is, I think it is a little long. I think a good 40 pages could have been weeded out (the book is 494 pages long, it would definitely survive). After reading the author's note in the back of the book, the book is set in sixteenth century Norway. This is a neat tidbit to learn after the story, but I don't think it bears a lot of relevance to the beginning of the story.
The story has a very steady pace, the characters are all well thought out and have their own unique personalities. The different aspects presented in the beginning of the story come into play throughout the story.
It also helps that Rose is a bit of a badass. Something I still find refreshing about the book is there are very few instances where Rose's gender is of any sort of issue to the rest of the world... and it's only when she's getting on boats and dealing with the superstitious sailors. The rest of the world is like, "Oh, you're going on a crazy adventure that will take you hundreds of miles from home? Good luck!" So there isn't anything like, "You're a women, going alone?!? Where are your escorts/male companions???" I still think that's a pretty neat aspect of the story, also too uncommon about stories (and the world in general).
I do wish more of the chapters had been narrated by the white bear, but I also understand why they weren't. There was so much of the curse that had to be left unsaid in order to defeat the curse, which I think is a theme that happens in older fairy tales (and is starting to become more prevalent in the retelling of fairy tales (which is neat)). It would have been cool to hear more from the bear too.
This is a very complicated story as it's told from many different view points that help weave together such an engrossing tale. It's a hard story to talk about in summary when soooo much has happened, has a lot of metaphoric significance throughout the book, and well it's complicated. I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel, West.
Happy reading!
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