Deerskin by Robin McKinley

This book was....interesting. Not what I expected, but I enjoyed it for the most part. When I was looking for books after my awesome dream I found this on the shelf next to the book I was looking for. The synopsis looked promising so I checked it out.

This is a spin off the fairytale "Donkeyskin", which I had never heard of so I'm guessing many other people haven't. It's about a princess who is the daughter of the beloved and extraordinarily conceited king and queen. Her mother is known to be the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, and her father, along with the rest of the kingdom, is smitten with her. She dies when Lissar (the princess) is 15 and her father loses his mind with grief. Lissar grows up to be beautiful like her mother and those around her begin to notice. On her 17th birthday her father declares that he will remarry and that Lissar will be his bride. She is horrified (as well she should be) and locks herself in her room. Her father breaks in and rapes and beats her until she is close to death. She manages to escape with her one friend, her faithful fleethound Ash (who was also injured in her father's attack), away from the kingdom and finds solitude for the winter in an abandoned cabin in the woods. Here she blocks her memory of the horrors of her past and seeks a way to move forward with her life.

This story was a lot darker than I expected (not knowing about the rape/beating beforehand) and I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone without them knowing that it gets, not necessarily too graphic, but very realistic dealing with ugly topics. Overall I enjoyed the story and earnestly wished for Lissar's happy ending, which she got, but perhaps not as happy as I would like fairytales to end. This book had the same problem as Robin McKinley's last book I read, Beauty, in that the main character's journey and life is painstakingly described in detail, but the ending is rushed and left me unsatisfied. When I read a fairytale, I want a mind-blowing, weak-at-the-knee, unforgettable happily ever after, where there is no doubt that the prince and princess WILL be happy together after all their struggles. Lissar had to go through some serious trials and she deserved the best happy ending imaginable, not a wishy-washy, rushed, semi-sweet ending. My only other criticism is that things got a little weird at the end and I found myself not really believing what the characters were doing because it all seemed so far-fetched, but maybe that's just me.

Overall: I would recommend to others, but perhaps not for the faint of heart. It gets a little gruesome.

3 out of 5 stars