Evie is happiest when she s healing people, diagnosing diseases, and prescribing medications. So when her best friend, Wormy, unexpectedly proposes to her, she kindly turns him down; she has far too much to do to be marrying anyone. And besides, she simply isn’t in love with him.
But a certain meddling fairy named Lucinda has been listening in, and she doesn’t approve of Evie’s rejection. Suddenly, Evie finds herself transformed from a girl into a hideous, hungry ogre!
Evie now has only sixty-two days to accept another proposal – or else be stuck as an ogre forever.
[Slight spoiler/question thing at the bottom of post]
One of my all time favourite books is Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, so I was excited to hear it was getting a companion novel. Ogre Enchanted takes place years before Ella’s story, but throws in a few familiar names (which I didn’t realise with some of them until nearing the end of the book). It’s also another adaptation of a fairy tale, which is something I never realised, and I’m not sure many other readers would have done either. I’d never heard of The False Prince and the True, which is why later plot points felt a bit shoehorned in, because it was all part of following the plot of the original fairy tale. Although she does a good job of tying it in to Ella’s origins, and t certainly picks up the pace in the second half of the book. I just think with Ella Enchanted, people know the story, so they know what key elements to look out for, and how it’s been changed. If you’re like me and unfamiliar with The False Prince and the True, you don’t have that comparison to draw from.
I’m not sure how much of Evie’s personality is who she genuinely is, and what’s the result of being turned into an ogre because we don’t get to see much of her before she’s transformed which literally happens by the end of the first chapter (at which point she’s already reminding me of Data from Star Trek lol which is who I compared her to for the rest of the book, but just a hungry one). As for her passion for being a healer, it did seem to be her sole interest throughout the book (besides the sudden need to find someone to marry) and I wish there’d been a little more to her. Some other interest, or something to show a shared hobby between her and Wormy besides her testing medication on him?
We follow her on her quest to find love and break the spell, which is a simple enough plot (I mean it is a kid’s book) and straight away I rule out Wormy (on account of the name, I mean come on) and the fact his proposal was a total of seven pages in. Besides, everyone knows the protagonist doesn’t end up with the first guy she’s with. She also calls him ‘dear’ like she’s his grandmother or something. Weird. She ventures out on her own to find other ogres in order to learn how to zEEn, when she comes across Peter, a handsome merchant who offers her his donkey for dinner while he makes a run for it.
Just like the situation in Ella Enchanted, Evie’s unable to tell anyone about the spell that’s been cast on her, and it’s another case of travelling the length of Kyria in search of someone – for Ella it was the fairy Lucinda, and for Evie it’s to find Peter after he goes missing – but this felt a little flat to me in comparison. Finding Lucinda was more integral to the plot where Ella was concerned, whereas looking for Peter felt like more of a meander through the countryside until we get to the next plot point. Luckily the book is nicely paced throughout so your attention isn’t lost (I think the benefit of being a kid’s book lol)
The second half of the novel is definitely where it picks up and we meet more characters like Squire Jerrold (aka potential love interest number three), Mandy, Trunk, and Lady Eleanor. And if I think about it, Evie’s own plot is purely ‘find someone to marry’ (romance and the like is usually reserved to secondary plot status in fantasy fiction), so the other characters were necessary to give her something else to focus on, as well as feeding back into the original fairy tale this story derives from. She finds Peter again, and despite the mistrust from his donkey earlier (rightfully placed) Peter grey on me as a more complex character.
“I surprise myself. I wouldn’t kill a person or cause a person to be killed. I don’t even enjoy using my kind of persuasion to deprive people – like the king or Eleanor – of their ability to choose.”
A sense of humanity…? (you understand why that is when you reach the end) Unfortunately Wormy managed to grow on me too, but not because Evie kept thinking about him throughout the novel, almost constantly bringing up the ways they were compatible with one another.
I loved Wormy because he was good and kind, too, and because we were such old friends, and because he often was ill or thought himself so. Early in her profession, a healer needed someone like him.
So they all took a turn at playing favourites which brings up a point that I really like in the book, and it’s something Levine does well, and that’s subtext. I love it n romantic storylines where one character is oblivious to how the other is feeling about them, and they attribute everything they do or say to mean something else. I don’t know why that’s a thing I like, but I wish I could do it.
Ogre Enchanted is a fun, quick read (I was engrossed and finished it in about four days, which is quick for me because I’m such a slow reader. No idea how people manage to finish novels in a day.) It’s great to be able to revisit the same world again, and I hope Levine writes more!
4.5/5
……can anyone else smell lilacs?
[Spoiler]
(So I mentioned earlier it took me longer than I’d like to admit before realised the book had characters from Ella Enchanted in it, notably her parents), but when I read “Many and a pregnant Lady Eleanor” I was like….huh?? I mean by this point we know they’re Ella’s parents and it was interesting to read the dynamics between them and how that all came about, but the fact she knows what he’s like, that he doesn’t love her and only wants the status being married to her brings…I mean why would she sleep with him?
WHEN THE BOOKENDS 