Wednesday, February 08, 2012

REVIEW: Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire

My Rating: 4 out of 10 stars

The year is 1502, and seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada lives perched high above the rolling hills and valleys of Tuscany and Umbria at Montefiore, the farm of her beloved father, Don Vicente. But one day a noble entourage makes its way up the winding slopes to the farm and the world comes to Montefiore.

In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucrezia--decadent children of a wicked pope--no one can claim innocence for very long. When Borgia sends Don Vicente on a years-long quest, he leaves Bianca under the care (so to speak) of Lucrezia. She plots a dire fate for the young girl in the woods below the farm, but in the dark forest salvation can be found as well ...

I had a difficult time making it through this book. The pace was pretty slow most of the way through, and the dialog and phrasing would often set my mind to wandering so next thing I knew, I wasn't even comprehending what I was reading. That's usually a strong indicator that I'm pretty bored with a book. :( I decided to plod through anyway. Perhaps it was because I enjoyed Wicked so much--both the book and the theater production--that I thought Mirror Mirror would eventually get there too, but alas it did not, and I was left feeling that my time could've been better spend with my nose in the next Sookie book which has been lying in wait on my night stand. :)

The reason I'm not giving this book a lesser rating is that even though I didn't enjoy it, I still felt the author himself is a good writer. I didn't find myself criticizing the story itself as I was reading as I do with other books with really bad writing. So just because this book wasn't my cup of tea, and I'm sure others will agree that it's a bit slow-paced, there may be others who enjoy it a lot more than I did.

BookCrossing journal page for this book