The Sevenfold Spell: 07/20/11

The Sevenfold Spell, an ebook by Tia Nevitt, re-spins the tale of Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of a spinner affected by the proclamation banning all spinning wheels after the curse is put on the newborn princess.

Doesn't that sound like a brilliant way to rethink a well known fairy tale? I was excited to dive into this novella. Coming in at 97 pages it's a fairly quick read, although slower for me because I'm not much of an ebook reader.

When the book stays focused on the task at hand: describing how the curse has affected the kingdom it's a page turner. Unfortunately it has these huge lags in the plot devoted to sexually explicit filler. I'm not against reading sex in books but it has to have a point. Here it really doesn't except to add about twenty or thirty pages to the book.

What could have been there instead would be more character development for Talia. Her friendship with Rose could have been expanded. Her relationship with Willard could have been given some depth to make their sex scenes actually meaningful.

Read via NetGalley.

Three stars.

Comments (2)

Comment #1: Thursday, July, 21, 2011 at 00:21:02

Sniffly Kitty

I hate it when sexually explicit sex scenes, sexual innuendo and/or characters mooning at each other are thrown in and essentially ruin what might otherwise have been a great story >.<

Comment #2: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 22:41:02

Pussreboots

The lengthy sex scenes were frustrating because they got in the way of Rose's characterization and the mystery behind the curse.