SPOIL-FREE SUMMARY
Based on the fairy tale “the twelve dancing princesses”, Rowena and her sisters live a sheltered life thanks to their father. Rowena dreams of freedom and her mother. The girls eventually find a secret tunnel under their room but their father is determined to discover why every night their slippers are ruined, even though they are locked in their rooms.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Rowena is the main character and the only sister we get to know. She dreams of a normal life, and starts having visions throughout the story.
Sir Bedivere is a knight that followed King Arthur and ends up having to return excalibur to a lake. But he doesn't know where to start. One of his hands is paralyzed. He is rather self conscious about it. Not much about his life is known before the scene, except his love for his king.
Morgan Le Fey is actually a side character throughout the story. She has taken place where she can watch over who she sees a threat to her power.
Sir Ethan is an overprotective father of twelve daughters. After his wife went off and vanished he kind of goes crazy and builds a huge wall so he daughters can never leave home.
Vivianne is a great sorcerer who spends the most of her story trapped. But we do get her history revealed to us. She loves her husband and daughters dearly.
TRUE LOVE OR LIES?-SPOILERS
When Sir Ethan was younger, he got lost in the woods and met a beautiful woman. So he married her and never left the woods.
Vivienne admits it was all manipulation, as she cast a spell to bring her an ideal lover. Sir Ethan had no say in the matter and we are not told much of his life before then. Did he have a family? Perhaps a woman he was courting? It says he was in the military, was he taking part in a war?
Apparently Vivianne doesn't care about free will. And yet she says that eventually their relationship becomes real love. How would she know? Does the spell have a release date? Did Sir Ethan eventually get to return to his old life instead of living as a hermit in the woods? Don't think so. This whole relationship feels obsessive and a perversion.
Ethan even reveals he doesn't know if its real love or not, but he doesn't care.
VIVIENNE'S HISTORY
Turns out that Vivienne was a great Sorcerer who worked close with Merlin. People became jealous because of this and her life was threatened so she ran off into the woods. But she didn't want to be alone so she made Sir Ethan come to her.
But she is so important that every so often she goes off without telling her husband a thing so she can still be useful to King Arthur. I don't know why Merlin wouldn't be more important and why she is even necessary. She gave him the sword and asked that after he dies that it was returned to her.
Eventually Morgan le Fey traps her under a lake, because I guess she isn't powerful enough to kill her.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
Rowena shares the gift of her mother and has visions. She sees Bedivere and immediately falls in love. Unfortunately it comes across as a shallow relationship based on nothing more than sexual attraction. Him noting how beautiful and graceful she is; Her noting how handsome and brave he is, ect.
I understand that most romantice relationships start this way but they have to evolve into something more. But this one never does. Even when Rowena and Bedivere actually meet. They don't learn much about each other and it seems obvious that Rowena is merely starved for affection.
The dialogue between them is particularly awful as it's not realistic, instead they speak as though they are reciting bad poetry. The majority of their relationship is spent talking about how much they love each other, not actually getting to know each other or developing their relationship.
NORMAL GIRLS
When the daughters learn that there father is putting locks on their doors (because of their ruined slippers) they decided to complain. They wonder why they can't be normal girls who go to parties and meet men. Shouldn't some of them already by married?
I kept wondering, why hadn't any of them asked this before? They weren't children anymore and yet they never thought to ask why they were kept as slaves behind a wall? This cetainly isn't treated as an argument that they have had before. Especially considering where it leads.
Ethan finally admits they are right and says perhaps he needs to find them matches.
If the girls had been sheltered their entire lives, shouldn't they have been happy to be able to marry and leave? Their father may be kind of crazy, but I doubt he would force them to marry someone they completely hated.
MORGAN LE FEY
After sensing Vivienne's power, Morgan thinks that she is trying to contact her daughters. So she goes there in disguise, hoping to find out if they girls know anything. She wants to prevent Vivienne from getting Excalbur because it went missing in battle because she wants it for herself.
Unfortunately I found her more annoying than threatening. I certainly never hated her. She never considers killing off any of the girls, and if she had I think she might have came across more menacing.
The final and first real encounter with her near the end was lacking. And I thought it was odd that in the history lesson we learn she seduced a knight and used him to trap Vivienne. But he is never mentioned again.
MORGAN'S SPELL-SPOILERS
Morgan casts a spell to distract the girls when she decides they are too much of a threat. They might actually discover where Vivienne is, because she spoke to them through a scrying bowl and led them underground to a secret tunnel. So she makes the tunnel take them to a magical place that leads to dresses and music. Not to mention men with stag's heads. The girls dance with them all night, every night, forgetting about their mother.
THE GIRLS MEET A MAN
After spending all of their youth and adulthood away from any men, when they first get to meet one, they immediately start flirting. I thought this was unrealistic.
In reality they would have treated him rather oddly, perhaps like they would treat a girl. After all, they are sheltered like children. They have never been courted and never met a man to flirt with. And besides being forbidden to be around any men, they haven't been taught any boundaries or had any expectations put on them.
By all accounts this scene should have been silly. And yet the girls come across as femme fatals who are eager to seduce a man.
WE CAN TRUST THE STAG MEN
I understand that there is a spell that makes the girls rather docile and tempts them to keep returning even though they have no idea what this place is. But When I learned that the girls' asked one of the stag men for a sleeping potion I was left stunned.
Did the spell also make the girls not just docile, but stupid as well? I expect they got this idea while back in their room, not under the spell. So when the potion nearly kills the man I couldn't believe how stupid they were. Didn't any of them think this might be a bad idea?
VIVIENNE AND HER DAUGHTERS
When it comes to their mother, the Rowena and Eleanore have different feelings. Eleanore is mad because she thinks her mother abandoned them. I didn't get to know any of the girls besides Rowena and her. But Twelve girls are a lot, so I wouldn't expect to get to know all of them. After all, we still have Bedivere, Vivienne and Morgan Le Fey with their own stories. Even so, I wish there had been a way to at least make them more distinct characters.
SIR ETHAN'S INSANITY
It's obvious that Ethan isn't emotionally stable. And yet the girls never discuss this. They complain that they don't get to meet men and marry but never seriously admit that their father is nuts. They also complain that one will be handed over as a prize (when in reality a story taken in this time period would not put romantic love before all, as arranged marriages were the norm throughout most of history.)
I get that the point was to show that Ethan felt betrayed by a woman he married for love (even though he didn't, he was under a spell that was never taken off as far as we know). But nothing works because it's never acknowledged what screwed him up, not just being abandoned to raise twelve girls, but to have had no choice to the marriage to a woman who had many secrets in the first place.
FACE OFF?
The problem is that there is no real fight between Morgan and Vivienne. Morgan uses vines of trees to attack Sir Bedivere and Rowena. Besides her rock monster and using a man's form to attack Bedivere (earlier on) she isn't really threatening. It's all very anticlimatic.
VIVIENNE AND HER HUSBAND
When Vivienne returns it's a shock to Ethan. But they reconcile rather easily which I feel was unrealistic. Maybe this was due to the lack of time left in the book. But I feel like Ethan has had a long time to think about his relationship with Vivienne and how it was obviously a perversion. And yet he never seems to realize that. I guess he was just mad that she left.
But when she explains why, all is forgiven. It annoyed me that the whole thing Ethan is a submissive man unless it comes to his daughters, then he is just an irrational jerk. This could be made sense of, but only if his past relationship was considered to be immoral.
CLIMAX
Rowena pretends to give Bedivere the sleeping potion and he follows them underground. Morgan Le Fey follows them. Eventually Vivienne is freed, there is a brief fight with Morgan and they return home.
CONCLUSION
“The Twelve Dancing princesses” doesn't give you too much to go of off, so there is plenty of opportunity for creativity. And this take does try to be original, mainly because it occurs during the reign of King Arthur and incorporates Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake.
Unfortunately I found myself rather indifferent to characters that were either portrayed as shallow or were barely portrayed at all, like Eleanore.
The romance between Sir Bedivere and Rowena dominates the story, even though they don't actually meet until halfway through. They fall in love in a matter of minutes and their romance is portrayed as flowery, shallow and in the manner of a bad romance novel.
Morgan le Fey is a rather underwhelming character and Vivienne comes across as selfish, while Ethan is an unacknowledged victim. He never got a choice in his marriage and seems traumatized by it. I felt bad for him but he doesn't get any redemption since his trauma isn't really acknowledged.
It's not the worst adaption I have read of this fairy tale, but it's also not good. The story itself had potentional but the characters didn't help.
I give “The Night Dance” two stars.
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