Fairest

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine

This book is by the same author as Ella Enchanted. It is a distant retelling of Snow White.
Aza and her family run an inn, the Featherbed. She was abandoned there as a newborn and the innkeepers raised her as their own. She doesn't look like the rest of her family. She is larger with dark hair. I think we are supposed to think of her as unattractive because she surely does.

Aza is asked by one of the guests of the Featherbed to accompany her to the wedding of the king. While there Aza meets the Prince Ijori and his dog. She also is asked by the new queen Ivi, to be her lady in waiting. Soon after the wedding, the king is injured and lies in a coma.

When Aza still lived with her parents, she taught herself to illuse. She can throw her voice and mimic any other sound. One day the Ivi overhears Aza illusing. This kingdom loves to sing. They use singing the same way that we would use prayer, or the way other kingdoms would have a ball. Ivi comes from another kingdom and is not gifted with a lovely voice, the way that most of the others around her are. Ivi asks Aza to illuse for her whenever she must sing in public.

Ivi is ruining the kingdom while the king is in his sickbed. Aza and Ijori are falling in love.

Aza tries to find a way to become beautiful. She finds a spell but it doesn't work. She looks in Ivi's mirror and sees what she would look like if she were beautiful.

Soon the secret is out. Ivi and Aza are found illusing. Ivi blames Aza. Just as the guards are to put Aza in jail, she drinks the potion that Ivi has. She becomes stunningly beautiful. She is imprisoned. She breaks free and finds one of Ivi's men ready to take her into the forest to save her. Aza realizes that the man is really sent to kill her. Aza is able to save his life when confronted by ogres. He takes her to some gnome caverns and leaves her. He returns to Ivi to tell her that Aza is dead.

Aza lives with the gnomes and finds out that she may have gnome blood in her. While in the caverns she learns to appreciate herself more. Ivi finds out Aza is alive and makes herself into a gnome. She tricks Aza into eating poisoned food. Aza is trapped between life and death and is transported and then trapped in Ivi's mirror. She also returns to her former unattractive self. Eventually she is able to break free and destroy the being in the mirror that has trapped her there.

The king recovers. He still loves Ivi despite what she has done to the kingdom and to Aza. He decides after three years he will turn the kingdom over to Ijori. The king and Ivi go into exile. Ijori and Aza marry and have children. Happy, happy, happy.

This was a fun book to read. Levine made up a lot of songs since these were singing people. Sometimes I felt like the story didn't flow very well, but overall I liked that Aza was able to come to see how valuable she was despite how she looked. She is able to have a full life and because she becomes the queen she is then thought of as stately instead of ugly. I found this to ring true as I thought about people I know that think themselves unattractive. I rarely think about what people look like. I pay more attention to the way they act and the way they treat others. If they are good people I always tend to think of them as attractive.

Rating 3.5 I really liked this and may read it again.........I just couldn't go any higher. I don't sing so the songs really threw me off and sometimes I felt like Aza's voice was confusing.
Rating G