Hey, folks. Welcome back to the Book Report!

Last month, Disney released Tangled, a new take on the Germanic fairy-tale Rapunzel, collected by the Brothers Grimm. It had an official budget of $260 million, making it officially the second most expensive film ever made. Silly Disney.

But I like the fairy-tale with a twist idea. Quite a few books have been written with the idea in mind, and I thought for today’s Book Report I’d take a look at a few of them.

Probably the king of twisting fairy-tales around is Gregory Maguire. In 1995 he turned a classic villain into a sympathetic heroine in Wicked: The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch of the West. The excellent book was adult-oriented and very dark, and the butchering that happened to it on Broadway hardly does it justice, no matter how much you believe the musical was excellent. He returned to his version of Oz in 2005 with Son of a Witch and again in 2008 with A Lion Among Men, but before that he twisted the Cinderella fairy-tale around in 1999 with Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (which Disney converted into a TV movie in 2002). In 2003, Maguire twisted another fairy-tale with Mirror, Mirror, presenting a new look at Snow White.

In 1983, Anne Rice (writing under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure) published The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, an erotic Bondage/Dominant/Submissive/Masochist retelling of the fairy-tale. She made the story a trilogy with Beauty’s Punishment in 1984 and Beauty’s Release in 1985. The highly graphic erotica series out-sold her previous best-seller, Interview With the Vampire.

One of my favorite revisions of a fairy-tale is the 1999 novel Enchantment, written by Orson Scott Card. More than just an alternate retelling of Sleeping Beauty, it sets the fairy-tale smack-dab in the middle of Russian folk-tales, mixes it up with a little Jewish home life, and throws in some Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court for good measure. Then he inverts it all and adds the slightest dash of Narnia.
The recipe concocts a delicious yarn, where the villains revel in their villainy and heroes realize just how bloody difficult it is to actually be heroic.

I’ve written about Orson Scott Card before (twice, actually), and it’s a testament to his talent that each time it’s been about a different genre of fiction. I’m not sure I’ve ever agreed with his personal politics or religion, but he manages to tap into something universal in his fiction that resonates strongly with me, and he’s been the most recommended author I’ve given people (seriously, go read Ender’s Game).

Grimm’s Fairy Tales are currently available for free as an ebook at Barnes and Noble right now. If you are so inclined, I encourage you to go give ‘em a read (or reread) and then check out some of these revisions. I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hey kids! Welcome back to the Book Report.

At the end of the 19th Century, an Egyptology craze swept through high-society. “Egyptomania” started initially as artifacts from Napoleon’s Egypt campaign were recovered and studied, and by the turn of the century it was very en vogue to be able to discuss things Egyptian.
This fascination naturally found its way into literature.

In 1827, probably the first mummy story hit the stands, titled The Mummy! Or a Tale of The Twenty-Second Century. It was written by Jane C. Loudon but published anonymously. In the tale, a hideous-looking mummy named Cheops is revived in the 22nd Century and wanders, much like Frankenstein’s Monster, through the world. Unlike the Monster, however, Cheops gives advice and political commentary to any who befriend him. Unlike most Victorian science fiction, Loudon created a vision of the future that was more than just her contemporary England but with some vague political changes. She took current ideas of technology and explored how they might have evolved in 300 years. She even predicted a kind of internet. The novel also gained notice as an early feminist novel, proposing that the women of the future would have more freedoms and even might wear trousers.
Ultimately, the novel worked as political satire and did little to influence the way mummies found their way into ranks of popular horror monsters.

In 1869 Louisa May Alcott wrote Lost in a Pyramid: The Mummy’s Curse, which might be the first example of type of horror story we are looking for. In the story, a lost explorer burns a mummy for light, using the remains as a torch to get out of the tomb. He takes a gold box from the mummy as a souvenier, which contain strange seeds of an unknown plant. The explorer’s fiancee plants one of the seeds and wears the resulting flower on their wedding day. But the seeds carried with them the curse of the mummy, should anyone disturb its rest. The short story ends with the curse settling upon the young bride and the explorer ruing the day he ever disturbed the mummy.

The first story to depict a mummy as a reanimated monster was Lot No. 249, written by Arthur Conan Doyle and published in 1892, but the novel which had probably the most impact on every mummy movie ever made was The Jewel of Seven Stars, written by none other than Bram Stoker 1903. The book received a lot of criticism for its gruesome ending, so Stoker removed the last chapter and rewrote a happier ending in 1912. In 2008, Penguin Classics restored the original ending in its release, and included the revised ending as an appendix.

A great mummy story that I particularly enjoyed came out in 1989, written by Anne Rice. Titled The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned, the book did for mummies what her Vampire Chronicles did for blood-suckers: pulled them out of the gothic story-telling style into the modern era without sacrificing any of the emotional depth of these monsters, yet still able to display their monstrosities.
The story is set in 1914, and within an unusual tomb, archaeologist Lawrence Stratford discovers a mummy that left-behind notes claim is pharaoh Ramses II. The trouble is, the tomb was built in the first century B.C., and Ramses II supposedly died more than 1,000 years prior.

The ensuing story is full of blood and horror and hunger, but at its heart is a love story (much like Dracula). The novel also includes some great fictionalization of Egyptian politics, as well as an interesting take on the Cleopatra-Mark Antony-Julius Caesar love triangle.
It is a ripping good yarn, and though written to stand alone, Anne Rice allowed for sequels. At the end of the novel is the statement, “The adventures of Ramses the Damned shall continue.” Unfortunately (or not, I guess, depending on how you view religion), Anne Rice found a renewed faith in the Catholic Church and turned her writings away from the horror genre to focus on writing “only for the Lord”.
Perhaps someday she’ll be able to reconcile faith with fiction and return to the genre she (along with Stephen King) made so accessible to general readers, and give us a sequel.

That “wraps” up my Report on mummies this week.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_