Note: a spoiler free annotation of this book with read likes can be found here.

Review

This book takes fans of the movie Labyrinth fans to early 19th century Bavarian woods where plain, quiet, boring Liesl learns her grandmother’s tales of the magical underground realm of goblins is real. Adventure and romance ensue as Liesl attempts to rescue her sister Käthe from the Goblin King’s clutches.

Liesl loves composing music but her little brother is the musical prodigy in the family. Her sister Käthe has all the beauty and personality. And so Liesl helps her mother take care of the inn and tries to forget the nonsenical stories her grandmother raised her on about the Goblin King and his underground kingdom. After an encounter at the Goblin Market where Liesl receives a magical gift and a strange warning, her life will soon change forever. One night while Liesl waits in the wings during her brother's performance, Käthe is stolen away to the realm of the goblins. Liesl must now try to save her sister by defeating the trickster Goblin King at his own games. Don’t forget, the old laws require a human queen to sacrifice her aboveground life and reign over the goblins to keep the seasons in balance. There also might be more between Liesl and the Goblin King than childish games and a quest to save a stolen sister.

In a story that should be ruled by magic, adventure, and dark romance, this tale as old as Persephone and Hades fails to carry a tune.

Content warnings: Light racism and sexism indicative of the time period, sex on the page. The author consistently uses the term "queer" to describe a cis, heterosexual female who does not fit all the stereotypes of her gender which some in the LGBTQIA community may find upsetting.

Personal Thoughts

WARNING: May contain spoilers

I was incredibly excited for this Labyrinth retelling. I ordered it as soon as I learned about it. I didn’t care if it was going to be cheesy, I was all in. But omigoodness, I felt like this was not a good book. The writing was inconsistent, going in-depth on things like music (but never deep enough to explain the concepts discussed for anyone not in the know) and completely glossing over other important things like locations, and landscape and character descriptions.

The Goblin King is clearly important but no facet of his personality is given enough description to flesh out this pivotal character. The most I remember are his mismatched eyes (hey, Bowie) and feathery hair. Liesl/Elisabeth is an annoying protagonist and I didn’t want to follow her on her journey. I just did not care if she what she wanted/deserved. This made it a struggle to understand the Goblin King’s obsession with her which is obviously key to the duology. The romance is troublesome with some scenes bordering on attempted rape of the male protagonist by the female protagonist. While the ending tugged some heartstrings, it was really because I wanted so much more for the Goblin King’s character.

The setting was poorly developed. Perhaps my book and art history studies have ruined historical fiction for me but I felt like the time period could not be accurately pinned down because descriptions of objects and/or places kept changing and never fully aligned. I also found the language problematic. It went back and forth between being contemporary and having inflections that attempted to mimic more historic English turns of phrase (even though the book takes place in Germany). Big words were thrown around seemingly at random to maybe prove the author knew them or meet a word quota? There is also consistent use of the term “queer” to describe a cis, straight woman who is not stereotypically feminine or beautiful. Given the history of the word within the LGBTQIA+ community and the fact that this book was written in 2015, it seems rather tone deaf.

I found myself wishing this story were in another author’s hands. I was dreaming of the fictional, historic and fairy tale Bavaria of Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves, or wishing the monstrous but lovable Goblin King was better developed like Morozko in Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy. To muddle through, I kept imagining the Goblin King as Hades from Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe.

Apparently this book has a sequel but I will just Duck Duck Go the ending instead of reading it.

Final resting place: Despite my growing collection of fairy tale retellings, this will go to my neighborhood Little Free Library.