Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

February 28th, 2008 at 9:41am |

Audience: 11 and up

Rating: A-

Synopsis:

Lady Saren is faced with a tough choice: marry the man her father has chosen or be locked in a tower for seven years. Saren, who knows a dreadful secret about her betrothed, chooses the tower and is locked inside with a supply of food and a single maid, Dashti, who records their lives in a book of thoughts. But what will happen when their food supply runs out? What will the girls do when they discover that the world that lies outside of the tower is much different than the one that they left behind?

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) One of the best aspects of this book was that I had no clue what was going to happen next. I spent the whole book trying to guess if Dashti was in love with the Khan, or just his cat. What was the secret Saren knew? Was Khasar a werewolf? Did he eat My Lord? Would Saren ever cheer up? How would Dashti escape the death sentence at the council? Each of these questions kept me reading and guessing because I couldn’t predict how Hale would resolve the characters’ problems. The uniqueness of this plot kept me curious and intrigued until the very end.

I hated Saren for the majority of this book. I could understand her being locked in the castle if she had refused Lord Khasar because she love Khan Tegus, but when Tegus arrived at the tower and she wouldn’t even speak to him, I was appalled. It made sense for her to refuse to talk to Khasar, but why not the man she supposedly loved?

Saren’s attitude towards Dashti was also infuriating! She never bothered to help her around the tower and frequently stole her bed. Even worse, Saren’s actions continued to put both her and Dashti in increased danger: starting when she ate too much food from their store in the tower, to forcing Dashti to pretend to be someone she wasn’t. It wasn’t until I stopped to consider Saren’s motivations (everyone she loved abandoned and refused to listen to her, she alone knew the horrible secret about Khasar and if she told, she would be killed) that I began to understand and empathize with her.

Dashti was a great heroine. She refused to be someone else; even when she was pretending to be Lady Saren she still told mucker jokes and talked about her life truthfully. Because of this, the khan fell in love with the real her, so that when her identity was revealed, he didn’t feel betrayed or tricked. Thus, the lowly mucker girl with the unlucky birthmarks ended up being the Lady after all- what a powerful message to be true to yourself!