Ogre Enchanted (Ella Enchanted #0.5)

I was afraid that Ogre Enchanted would feel a little like Shrek but it didnt. Im not sure if that is a good thing or a bad one.

Evie and Wormy have been friends forever but they are at an age where maybe one of them is starting to feel a little more for the other. When Lucinda shows up and Evie doesnt accept a proposal from Wormy she is punished for her own good and turned into an Ogre with only two months to find someone to fall in love with her and propose.

This is difficult for Evie because one she is an Ogre and smells horrible and wants to eat anything meat based. Two it is bad because she can sense how others feel around her in her home town and it makes it impossible to stay. Evie needs to learn how to coerce like other Ogres do just to stay alive and so she leaves to set off on an adventure looking for love and a way to stay alive 2 months or longer if she is stuck this way forever.

I liked the baskstory to Ella Enchanted that can be found in this. It was interesting to see the beginning of Ellas parents and a few others that have been blessed by Lucinda for their own happiness. There are some fun adventures along the way and living with the Ogres was interesting, culturally speaking.

The downfall was so much of it was focused on finding someone to fall in love with Evie and propose. It was clear that Wormy was the one for her and she just needed to realize it. Also, Wormys plan while sweet was a bit silly too.

I am happy with the ending to the story.

It was an entertaining read and I think I would have liked it a little more if I were younger around 8-13 years old which is the age group for this book.

Lucinda is up to her usual fairy tricks, but Evie is a bit more strongly willed than Wormy was expecting. Rather than accept his marriage proposal, Evie chooses to be turned into an ogre, embarking on a 62-day quest to find someone who will love her smelly, ogre-y self and that she will also love. She thinks shes too young to marry, plus she wants to marry for love. While Wormy is her best friend and target of many of her cures for his ailments, real and imagined, hes not exactly her soulmate, and Evie has the integrity not to pull him into something they might regret.

Evie takes being an ogre pretty much in stride and takes off for the Fens, where she hopes other ogres will teach her how to persuade humans to let her be. Its a journey that will test her will power (so many people look good to eat), perseverance (she could settle down with a nice band of ogres to help her), and kindness (its not always easy to stop and heal people who would rather kill you). Through it all, Evie does her best to act with good will and justice, despite how hungry she is or how hateful those around her are. It doesnt help that some of those who act the nicest are really rather nasty inside, and those that are nice on the inside dont always look nice on the outside.

Ogre Enchanted contains many lessons about judging people by their looks, being swayed by flattery and false praise, prejudice, mob mentality, and the value of kindness. It also has a great lesson on the advisability of allowing a certain fairy to attend ones proposal or wedding (or christening). Lucinda has yet to learn her squirrel lesson, as the story predates that, and her rather addle-pated gifts are their usual curses in this cautionary fairytale. Its bad magic to do big magic, and Mandy, our favorite practical fairy, is there to remind us that sometimes the best solutions have no magic at all.

Gail Carson Levine is at her fairytale best with humor, wit, and a quirky cast of characters. Highly recommended.

Long before the bumbling fairy godfather Mortimer bestowed troublesome magical gifts on his changes in the Entwined Tales series, Gail Carson Levine graced us with the incompetent fairy godmother Lucinda in her captivating “Cinderella” adaptation, Ella Enchanted. Today, she is writing as much as ever. Last week, she released a companion novel to Ella Enchanted called Ogre Enchanted, which explores some of Lucinda’s previous magical follies. The story is a very loose reverse adaptation of “Beauty and the Beast” about a healer named Mistress Evora who doesn’t believe in getting married too young. When the troublesome fairy Lucinda overhears her turn down her friend Wormy’s marriage proposal, she is cursed to live as an ogre with a time limit of roughly two months to agree to a marriage proposal if she does not wish to remain in this state forever.

Evie took some time to grow on me as a protagonist. Unlike Aza from my favorite Gail Carson Levine book, Fairest, Evie is a confident healer who doesn’t easily get sad or frightened. Even when she was turned into an ogre, she found it more of a nuisance than a horrific tragedy. For someone from land of magic and fairy tales, she has some radical ideas about love. I was a bit miffed by her claim that the Beast from “Beauty and the Beast” settled for Belle because she was the only one he could find to break the spell and not because he truly loved her. Anyone who knows the story knows that isn’t the case at all. However, Gail Carson Levine has always had strong opinions about classic fairy tales that inspired her cleverly irreverent novels. For instance, she originally wrote Ella Enchanted because she never understood why Cinderella did everything she was told despite how horribly her stepmother treated her. Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg mentioned in the author blurb that Gail thought Wendy was a fool for wanting to leave Neverland. My initial ire wore off as I continued reading about Evie’s engaging and unexpected adventures.

Though not a princess by title, Evie exhibits all of the kindness and selflessness that you would expect from the protagonist of a princess story. She is extremely even after she is turned into an ogre and faces extreme prejudice. Though Evie ultimately does not want to be an ogre, she takes the curse in stride and uses it to learn more about other ogres and to protect the beings that they prey on. She struggles a little with her new urge to eat other people, but it never gets enough in the way her healing nature to become a true problem. The story is a fascinating look at what life is like for someone who appears intimidating and inspires fear but only wants to help people. Evie winds up staying at a castle that is plagued with an outbreak of a disease and does her best to heal everyone that needs help. Squeamish readers might be a little grossed out by her favorite ingredient called “purpline” that she regularly seeks and uses as the primary cure for most of her patients, which is comprised of purple dragon urine.

The romance in the book was downplayed since Evie spent most of her time as an ogre away from Wormy, her long-time patient and friend whose proposal she turned down at the beginning of the story. Despite her misgivings with the “Beauty and the Beast” narrative, Evie quickly thinks she is falling in love with Sir Peter, a charming and manipulative cad who I found to have much in common with Gaston from the Disney version. Her naive feelings toward him gave off definite Frozen vibes, but I was glad that it was not the main focus of the story. I felt awful for Evie’s loyal friend Eleanor who was pulled in by Peter’s charms as well. It was a shame that things did not turn out very happily for her in the end. My favorite cameo in the book was Mandy, Ella’s real fairy godmother from Ella Enchanted, who made a sudden and unexpected appearance as Eleanor’s fairy godmother.

Ogre Enchanted is a terrific character study about a cynical young lady who is so devoted to her trade that she is capable of continuing to heal scores of people despite having the appearance of something they fear. Evie inspires perseverance in the face of adversity and is a worthy predecessor for Ella, who was also forced to deal with Lucinda’s curse to the best of her ability. I did not enjoy the story quite as much as Fairest, which is still my favorite Gail Carson Levine book, because reading about severed ogre heads and dragon urine was simply not as glamorous as the kingdom of Ayortha that values singing and music above all else. Anyone who enjoyed Ella Enchanted and wants to learn more about Lucinda’s previous disasters will probably enjoy Ogre Enchanted.

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