Product Description

A new voice in fantasy weaves a rich, entrancing tale of a girl with powerful healing gifts —- and the courage to use them to save her ailing kingdom.

Shadows fall across the beautiful, lush kingdom after the queen is attacked by an unnatural beast, and the healing skills of her daughter, Alexandra, cannot save her. Too soon the widowed king is spellbound by a frightening stranger, a woman whose eyes reflect no light. In a terrifying moment, all Alexandra knows disappears, including her beloved brothers, leaving her banished to a barren land. But Alexandra has more gifts than she realizes as she confronts magic, murder, and the strongest of evil forces, and is unflinchingly brave as she struggles to reclaim what is rightfully hers. Fantasy lovers will be held in thrall by this tale full of visual detail, peppered with a formidable destructive force and sweetened with familial and romantic love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #638189 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-25
• Released on: 2008-03-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780763634810
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From School Library Journal
Grade 6–10—A story loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Wild Swans." Alexandra, 15, is the daughter of a powerful king and a wise queen. Like her mother, she has the gift of the ancient ways, but her talents aren't fully developed. The queen takes her into the ancient woods to celebrate her coming-of-age, and while there is attacked by an unnatural beast. Alexandra, in spite of her magic and healing skills, cannot save her mother. The king, plunged into despair, spends every day hunting for this beast. One day he returns with a beautiful woman who seems to charm everyone in the kingdom, except his children. Even though they believe that Zella is the shape-shifting beast that killed their mother, their father marries her. When they try to break her enchantment, Alexandra is banished to live with her aunt, and her brothers are turned into swans. It is with her aunt that the teen begins to understand her power, grow in maturity, believe in herself, and find love. She also realizes that if she is to save her family and her kingdom, she must take matters into her own hands and fight. Well written with vivid details, this rich tale has a little something for everyone—love, adventure, intrigue, betrayal, friendship, and murder. Fans of Robin McKinley and Donna Jo Napoli will love it.—Donna Rosenblum, Floral Park Memorial High School, NY
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Review
You probably know me already. In every story you've ever been told, someone like me exists. A figure in the background, barely noticed by the main players. A talentless, unwanted child. The ugly one. The ugly one only gets in the way. She is as out of place as a sparrow in a clutch of swans. This was the role I had in my father's hall.

It was the role my father gave me.

I have a memory. It's smudgy, almost faded into nothing now. It's a memory of my father. I can remember him picking me up in his big arms and whirling me around until I shrieked with laughter. I can remember him calling me his sweeting. But that's the last-the only-time I can ever remember him holding me.

I don't know what changed. Maybe it was me. I was not like my brothers-whom, it must be said, he did love a great deal. I must have been a great disappointment as a king's daughter. I could not be married to his advantage, for who would want to wed a creature so plain? And I was a strange little girl, always talking to things other people couldn't see, running out on my own, never listening to his orders. I can understand why he might have despaired of me. But I don't understand why he stopped loving me.

Yet I adapted, in the way that children do. For I held another place in my father's hall-the place my mother and brothers gave me. It's not enough to say that my mother was beautiful, though she was, almost unbelievably so. But her beauty was the least that people said of her. She was a wise woman, renowned throughout the Kingdom. That was why my father, the king, had wed her. In truth, her compassion and gentleness made her better loved than Father, with his harsh ideas of justice and his brusque
manner, could ever have been. Everyone adored her. I idolized her.

And then there were my brothers. I loved them almost as dearly as I did my mother.
David was the eldest, my father's heir and the most like him, with his dark hair and eyes. He was calm and steady, and it was he who endeavored to keep my dresses
unmuddied and the twigs from my hair.

Next came Hugh, the tallest and most handsome, with golden hair and the careless, flashing smile of our mother. He was quick and witty and could tease even our father from a black mood. He was the inventor- and victor-of all our childhood games. Robin was the closest to me in age as well as temperament. He was not a brilliant swordsman like David or a fine horseman like Hugh. He was a thinker and kept his nose in a book as often as he could manage; but for me he always had time-to talk, paint pictures, play games.

When I found the sparrow with a broken wing, it was Robin I ran to, and he put aside his book and showed me how to splint its bone and feed it, his hands and voice gentle. Robin and I were alike in many ways. We had the same deep auburn hair. We had both inherited Mother's eyes, the vivid green of newly unfurled leaves. But there, I'm afraid, my resemblance to Robin or my mother ended. When I said I was ugly, I meant it. Though I had my mother's hair and eyes and her pale skin, somehow I was . . . ugly. Or perhaps that's too strong a word. It was just that my small white face, with its delicate features, faded into insignificance, especially next to the dazzling charms of the rest of my family. They said David would make a wonderful king, in time. There was no doubt that Hugh would be a fine lord and defend his brother's lands well. And Robin, of course, would be a great scholar.

No one said what I would become. They looked at me with pity, I think. I was nothing. I was the wanderer, the dreamer who listened to the tides of magic in her sleep. I knew it was not my destiny to be great. I would only be Alexandra, and I would be free. So I wasn't unhappy, then. The wood-frame Hall, with its curved walls and thatching that almost reached the ground in places, was a true home to me, and I loved it, especially Mother's beautiful gardens that spread out over most of the hillside. I grew up running wild through the amber fields of the Kingdom, sleeping in the green and silver shadows of its forests, diving through the clear sweetness of its waters. My brothers ran with me, and my mother watched over us all. When I look back now, my memories of that time seem to stream and dance like dust motes gilded by the sun.

I remember one afternoon in late summer when I was about ten. Robin and I lay next to each other in the grasses by the hawthorn hedge, watching the clouds wheel above us in the sky. The hump of thatching that was the roof of the Hall was just out of sight over the curve of the hill, and below us was wild land dotted with daisies, forget-me-nots, and ammemnon flowers. Hugh and David had found some long sticks and were mock dueling nearby. Their shouts and swearing didn't disturb me-I was far too used to them-but Hugh's

yelp of pain at David's blow to his knuckles was particularly loud, and I rolled my eyes at Robin as Hugh proceeded to curse his opponent soundly. "How can David's father have been a mongrel cur with one leg?" I called lazily. "He's your father too."

"I refuse to believe it," Hugh said dramatically.

"Obviously David is a goblin child that Mother found by the wayside one day and took pity on."

"Unlikely," David said, lowering his stick. He leaned on it, continuing thoughtfully, "But it might be true that one of us is a changeling."

I blinked in shock and sat up. "Do you mean me?" I asked, my voice sounding too high-pitched even to my own ears.

"Don't be stupid," Hugh said hastily. "You're the living spit of Mother."

"I mean Hugh, of course," David agreed calmly. "You and Robin both look like Mother, and I obviously take after Father. But who does Hugh look like?"

About the Author
Zoë Marriott makes her fantasy debut with this luscious novel inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s THE WILD SWANS. She lives in England.

Customer Reviews

Courtesy of Teens Read Too
As the brightly colored cover suggests, Zoë Marriott's novel THE SWAN KINGDOM is a fantastical read. It is the retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's THE WILD SWANS, a fairy tale that I had never heard of, but that has all the familiar bits and pieces like the evil stepmother, enchanted gardens, and animal transformations. It also has a spunky, magically terrific but socially awkward princess-protagonist named Alexandra.

A few of my friends dislike retold fairy tales, because there is no surprise ending. But I think the whole point of reading rewrites is to focus on the journey, not the place. Anyway, that's why I love retold fairy tales, because it's a way to enjoy certain stories that I seemed to grow out of. After a few years in schoolyard politics, the characters that I loved just weren't complex enough to be satisfying anymore. Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White were never unsure, impatient, or angry. Besides some serious magical malady that I had no hope of ever battling, they never seemed to have problems at all.

Alexandra, however, has real problems like pleasing her parents, being plain, and weird. With books like THE SWAN KINGDOM, I get my dosage of magic, and from a girl normal enough to be friends with.

Alexandra is an ugly duckling from a family of swans. Her parents are the just and admired rulers of the Kingdom and her three older brothers are kind, handsome, and brilliant. Her only claim to fame is the magical connection that she shares with the land, but even then her skills are dwarfed by her mother's great healing abilities. When the novel opens, she has pretty much settled for a life in the shadows, but when her mother is killed by a beast in the forest and her father marries a strange, beautiful woman, Alexa has to step up or be squashed. While this story follows the general formula of a fairytale (evil destroyed and kingdom restored), Zoë Marriott has charted a unique path to Happily Ever After.

There seems to be a lot of retold fairy tales on the shelves these days. Some are humorous, like Gail Carson Levine's PRINCESS TALES series. THE SWAN KINGDOM is one of the more serious ones, and readers who enjoyed Robin McKinley's or Donna Jo Napoli's books should try it out.

Reviewed by: Natalie Tsang

A lovely retelling of a classic fairy tale
As a child, Hans Christian Andersen's "The Wild Swans" was always one of my favorite fairy stories. The tale of a devoted sister who loses her voice and inflicts nearly unbearable pain on herself --- all to weave the magical tunics that will save her 11 brothers, who have been transformed into swans --- was impossibly romantic and evocative to my childhood self. Apparently, Zoë Marriott, whose novel THE SWAN KINGDOM is a remarkably faithful but cleverly imaginative take on Andersen's classic tale, felt the same way.

Marriott's heroine is named Alexandra. The only daughter in a family with three sons, she has always felt particularly close to her mother, a wise woman whose true powers are hidden even from her daughter. When, just after introducing Alexandra to her true magical heritage and power, Alexandra's mother is brutally murdered by a horrible beast, Alexandra's entire family, including her brothers and father, are thrown into despair.

Alexandra's father, the king, spends weeks hunting the forest for the beast who killed his beloved wife. Instead, he discovers something in the woods that brings great joy to him but only fear and trepidation to his children. During his hunting trips, he discovers an eerily beautiful young woman, whom he invites into his home --- and his heart. Soon this mysterious stranger, Zella (whose name means "shadow"), bewitches not only Alexandra's father but also the entire kingdom. Only Alexandra and her brothers are exempt from her powers, perhaps because their mother's own powerful blood courses through their veins.

But when, during a botched attempt to overthrow her, the siblings see the full force of Zella's witchery, Alexandra's brothers mysteriously disappear, and Alexandra herself is sent far away to live with relatives in an entirely different region. Haunted by dreams of silent swans, eager to connect with the boy she meets on the beach but reluctant to discuss her past, Alexandra must discover her own powers while exploring how to destroy Zella's stranglehold on the Kingdom.

Marriott's retelling of "The Wild Swans" will certainly satisfy fans of Andersen's tale. She skillfully weaves together elements of the original fairy story into her more complex narrative, making them suitable for a young adult narrative such as this one. Romance, revenge, transformations, violence and loyalty --- THE SWAN KINGDOM has all these elements in abundance. Some readers may be surprised that Marriott remains so faithful to these classic plot points rather than subverting them in, for example, a more feminist "reading" of the original tale. Others will appreciate her fidelity to her original source, as well as her clever reworkings of it into a more comprehensive narrative.

Fantasy fans, even those unfamiliar with the original tale of which THE SWAN KINGDOM is based, will enjoy exploring Marriott's generally well-developed fantasy world. If anything, the climax, which is unfortunately condensed to one brief confrontation right at the book's closure, will disappoint readers for no other reason than that they would have liked to spend more time in Alexandra's world and see more fully the ways in which she grows into her full powers.

Nevertheless, Zoë Marriott is a new fantasy author to watch. Whether she continues to adapt classic stories for her own purposes or weaves her own magical universes, she is likely to delight audiences.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

lovely
I have maybe five books on display in my room. Because I want people to see my favs, and so they're in easy reach. As soon as I read the last word on the last page I cleared a new space for it in my room. Then I picked it up and read it again.

I've heard a lot of fairy tales in my life, and Wild Swans never really stuck out to me all that much. I reread it before reading this, and then fell in love. The male lead is so well written I found myself giggling over him more than I did for Edward Cullen!

In all honesty I picked up this book after listening to Swan lake music. And now Wild Swans is probably a favorite of mine.

Marriott is writter I will be watching veerrrryyyyyy closely.