J.A. Ironside's Reviews > Echo North

2.5 stars rounded up

It was ok. Obviously that's personal opinion, and my irritation and disappointment are compounded by the fact that I probably overhyped myself on this book. It may even be that I just fall outside the target audience for this one. It was a quick read and I did enjoy parts of it. The following is an account of my frustrations so please apply a generous pinch of salt.

There are chefs and cooks out there who are so natural and instinctive in the culinary art, that they can eye-measure and throw seemingly random ingredients into a pot together and still get a marvellous meal. There are authors out there who can do the literary equivalent - no plotting or planning ahead of time, no careful characters studies, no persistent 'but why' at various aspects of the growing book. Based on Echo North I would respectfully suggest that Joanna Ruth Meyer is not one of them.

The overall story is alright. I imagine many people will enjoy it. I am well aware that I am hamstrung by my love of sub-plots (there are none, very linear narrative) and well thought out plot structure. The writing itself is lovely, clear and clean. The imagery used is good. And as a concept, there's a lot going for this book.

Echo is horribly disfigured with facial scars when she attempts to rescue a wolf from a trap as a little girl of seven. This makes her something of an outcast - after all, how else does the Devil mark his own (I am well aware that that was a common belief but dear gods bring the Christian religion into fantasy and you'd better be telling a stonking good story to keep my attention). Her father remarries disastrously many years later and Echo finds herself drawn to a white wolf who keeps appearing at the edge of the forest. Could it be the same wolf who injured her ten years ago? When she argues with her stepmother over her missing father and storms out into the snow, the wolf offers her a bargain.

This is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, East of the Sun, West of the Moon and the Scottish folk ballad Tam Lynn. Meyer basically took three of my favourite things and mashed them together to make something I couldn't stomach. It could have been a book written for me, but in actual fact it didn't work. Here's the thing with fairy tale retellings, if you want them to work then you must incorporate and re-imagine the themes because the stories themselves are dated and often misogynistic but the themes are eternal. When someone says they have a favourite fairy tale, what they're really saying is that they have a favourite fairy tale theme. So in my case, I love the theme of compassion and looking beyond the surface in Beauty and the Beast, I love the acquisition of wisdom through experiencing suffering and having the grit to continue in East of the Sun, and I love the courage, understanding and sheer bone headed stubbornness, the demand to be self directing despite your sex in Tam Lynn. I saw literally none of these themes examined at all in Echo North, so that was strike one for me. And then ignoring the inherent sexual nature of all three of those sources just seemed to demonstrate a lack of understanding.

Or more accurately, this book was just not for me. As in it was literally not written with someone like me in mind.

Two other issues for me were contrivance and lack of deep characterisation. I never felt we were really allowed into Echo's head or that we ever experienced what she felt, so consequently the other characters became quite 2D - with the Wolf Queen and the Stepmother being very moustache twirly. Echo is a very passive character too, which sat ill when you think of the MCs of the source material - Janet from Tam Lynn in particular. (Literally ignored every suggested husband ever presented to her, climbed out of the castle and went to find a man she did want to sleep with. Later, stood toe-to-toe with the Fairy Queen to get the father of her unborn child back.)

As for contrivance, yes I know in fairy tales the fairy godmother shows up, or the North Wind, or someone who can endow our heroine with something that gives her a shot, but here it felt like a cop out. There were characters whose arcs were never tied off. What was the Wolf Queen's motivation, for instance? This is not a hard question - there's an entire body of folklore to dip into and borrow from. But even in fairy tales the villain's motive is never 'just because'. I felt like there were a lot of elements here that were just thrown in and while fabulous in their own right - the mirror library for instance - they just didn't add anything to the story. What was the purpose? Was it just whimsy? Because the whole point of whimsy is that it has a dark side; it's unsettling. This was just...random. Further emphasised by the fact that the structure of this book was very wobbly.

Anyway, it didn't really work for me BUT I can see someone else loving it. Someone who wants a simple, undemanding, fantasy fairy tale love story, that's clean and sweet, and not especially driven by conflict. I have the hardback edition of this book and it's gorgeous btw. Personally I would recommend Diana Wynn Jones' Fire and Hemlock, Edith Pattou's North Child (East), Sarah Beth Durst's Ice, Pamela Dean's Tam Lynn and Juliet Marillier's Son of Shadows and Heart's Blood, if you're looking for retellings of the stories I mention in my review. However if you love fairy tale retellings and are looking for a quiet book that doesn't tax your brain at all, give this a go.