The Swan Kingdom

by Zoë Marriott

Book Overview

A new voice in fantasy weaves a rich, entrancing tale of a girl with powerful healing gifts - and the courage to use them to save her ailing kingdom. Shadows fall across the beautiful, lush kingdom after the queen is attacked by an unnatural beast, and the healing skills of her daughter, Alexandra, cannot save her. Too soon the widowed king is spellbound by a frightening stranger, a woman whose eyes reflect no light. In a terrifying moment, all Alexandra...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0763634816
• ISBN13: 9780763634810
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Candlewick Press (MA)
• Length: 253 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

I love the imagery

I love the story that is told with a little romance, fantasy, adventure, and living off the land. I love the visual it provides in my imagination.

I loved this Fairy Tale story!

Zoe Marriott writes beautifully; her words grip you from the start. She's a descriptive writer who weaves a magical story. The "magic" in this story is evident from the start as the main character, Alexandra, explains it to us in a "wondrous" way without it sounding "hokey". I got the impression that this was a story of growth for our main character. She suffers great loss and has to find the strength to fight. Her journey is long and dark, and there is so much sadness in Alexandra's story. I could feel it just as the main character would through Zoe's writing. The peak of the story was exciting and had me on the edge of my seat; twists and turns; good overcoming evil. "The Swan Kingdom" showed what you can accomplish when you believe in yourself. And of course all fairy tales must have a happy ending right? Well you'll have to read the book to find out! I adored this book and intend to recommend it to those who are interested. If you enjoyed fairy tales as a child then this is a book for you to look into. I think that teenagers and adults alike will enjoy it. As an adult myself I can say the story sucked me in and kept me reading. I personally look forward to reading more of Zoe Marriott's work! Oh and isn't that cover Gorgeous!

lovely

I have maybe five books on display in my room. Because I want people to see my favs, and so they're in easy reach. As soon as I read the last word on the last page I cleared a new space for it in my room. Then I picked it up and read it again. I've heard a lot of fairy tales in my life, and Wild Swans never really stuck out to me all that much. I reread it before reading this, and then fell in love. The male lead is so well written I found myself giggling over him more than I did for Edward Cullen! In all honesty I picked up this book after listening to Swan lake music. And now Wild Swans is probably a favorite of mine. Marriott is writter I will be watching veerrrryyyyyy closely.

Amazing!

I really enjoyed this book! It is a bit like Juliet Marillier's first in her Sevenwater's Trilogy, but differs in places and shouldn't be overlooked because of this. Once I started reading it I simply couldn't put it down!

Courtesy of Teens Read Too

As the brightly colored cover suggests, Zoë Marriott's novel THE SWAN KINGDOM is a fantastical read. It is the retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's THE WILD SWANS, a fairy tale that I had never heard of, but that has all the familiar bits and pieces like the evil stepmother, enchanted gardens, and animal transformations. It also has a spunky, magically terrific but socially awkward princess-protagonist named Alexandra. A few of my friends dislike retold fairy tales, because there is no surprise ending. But I think the whole point of reading rewrites is to focus on the journey, not the place. Anyway, that's why I love retold fairy tales, because it's a way to enjoy certain stories that I seemed to grow out of. After a few years in schoolyard politics, the characters that I loved just weren't complex enough to be satisfying anymore. Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White were never unsure, impatient, or angry. Besides some serious magical malady that I had no hope of ever battling, they never seemed to have problems at all. Alexandra, however, has real problems like pleasing her parents, being plain, and weird. With books like THE SWAN KINGDOM, I get my dosage of magic, and from a girl normal enough to be friends with. Alexandra is an ugly duckling from a family of swans. Her parents are the just and admired rulers of the Kingdom and her three older brothers are kind, handsome, and brilliant. Her only claim to fame is the magical connection that she shares with the land, but even then her skills are dwarfed by her mother's great healing abilities. When the novel opens, she has pretty much settled for a life in the shadows, but when her mother is killed by a beast in the forest and her father marries a strange, beautiful woman, Alexa has to step up or be squashed. While this story follows the general formula of a fairytale (evil destroyed and kingdom restored), Zoë Marriott has charted a unique path to Happily Ever After. There seems to be a lot of retold fairy tales on the shelves these days. Some are humorous, like Gail Carson Levine's PRINCESS TALES series. THE SWAN KINGDOM is one of the more serious ones, and readers who enjoyed Robin McKinley's or Donna Jo Napoli's books should try it out. Reviewed by: Natalie Tsang

A Superb Retelling of "The Wild Swans" By a Talented New Author

Even though her father (the king) does not love her, Alexandra is happy playing with her three loving brothers and learning about plants and controlling the enaid (essentially, the land's life force) from her mother. Then, after her fifteenth birthday, Alexandra's mother is brutally mauled by a dangerous and mysterious wild beast and not even Alexandra's great healing skills can save her life. Her father goes out into the woods to hunt the beast and every day he comes back empty-handed--until the day he brings back a woman named Zella with black eyes that reflect no light. With the power to control those around her, Zella makes the king so besotted he makes her his bride and everyone she encounters comes under her sway. Only Alexandra and her brothers are immune and they realize they have to try and stop Zella from taking over the kingdom. When they try to destroy the talisman providing strength to her malicious powers, they fail. Alexandra's brothers disappear (the official story is that they're banished) and she is sent to live with her aunt in the neighboring kingdom. Her aunt is a strict and bitter woman, but Alexandra finds a measure of solace in escaping to the beach each night, where she meets a kind and handsome young man named Gabriel. But in Alexandra's absence, her home country is dying as her stepmother drains it of its power and the people are suffering under the new queen's tyrannical rule. Alexandra hopes that her brothers will appear and rescue her, but they remain missing. When her stepmother's poisonous influence reaches Alexandra at her aunt's house, she realizes that it is up to her to save her kingdom and bring back her brothers. This is a retelling of Hans Christen Anderson's "The Wild Swans," which is very, very similar to (but not exactly the same as) the Grimm Brother's "The Six Swans." Since I am a huge fan of fairy tale retellings, I was really looking forward to THE SWAN KINGDOM, and I was not disappointed. This is a very well-written and engaging book and so good that I'm surprised that it's the work of a first-time author. Although they are absent for much of the book, I really liked Alexandra's three brothers (David, Hugh & Robert). Marriott captured the playful and protective nature of the brothers perfectly and in a short time was able to make them into three distinct characters (instead of the personality-less blobs that some siblings & peripheral characters are sometimes condemned to be). It helped that Marriott decreased the number of brothers from eleven in the original fairy tale to three in her work--with eleven brothers it would have been a lot harder to make them so vibrant and likeable. Not only the brothers, but also nearly all the characters are well-written. Alexandra is a clever and courageous heroine and Gabriel is a likeable romantic lead. The stepmother in particular was incredibly well-done as she was really terrifying: with her powers, the princess and her brothers couldn't trust even