The Swan Kingdom

The Swan Kingdomby Zöe MarriottThe cover of this book made me buy it. I blame the cover art. The cover art did not let me down as I quite liked the story. Based on "The Wild Swans" by Hans Christian Andersen, Marriott created an enchanting story of a young girl who has to battle evil in order to save her brothers.Alexandra loses her mother to a creature in the woods, a creature who later bewitches her father into marrying her and taking over the kingdom. When Alexandra and her three brothers try to stop the evil creature, Alexandra awakes three days later in a carriage being shipped away and her only memory of her brothers is mixed with that of three large white swans.There is very little dialogue in this story, it is mostly description and generally I am not a big fan of that. I like my dialogue. I have always felt that as long as there is a lot of dialogue something is happening. Yes, I know that isn't always the case! But in my mind it makes the book more exciting!This author wields her pen like a paintbrush and created such vivid and beautiful imagery that I was enchanted right from the start. Alexandra is a very likable and level-headed young woman of fifteen. She thinks things through and doesn't whine or complain or act like most teens in books today. I think it helped that this was a purely fantastical world and the author made it believable and didn't try to modernize anything.The last time I was quite this enchanted by a book it was Gregory Maguire's Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, in case I didn't mention that before. *wink*Very enjoyable. Read it. :)