Book of a Thousand Days

by Shannon Hale

Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids.

• ISBN10: 1599903784
• ISBN13: 9781599903781
• Publish Date: 1 September 2009 (first published 18 September 2007)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 15 June 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 305
• Language: English

Reviews

[nitzan_schwarz]

This is a good friend's favorite book, and I can see why she likes it.

The story is told from the point of view of Dashti, a maid who finds herself trapped with her lady in a tower for seven years. Dashti is brave, optimistic and sweet. She works hard and finds the silver lining to every situation, and you grow to love her very quickly.

Saren, her lady, on the other hand, is MUCH harder to love. The girl is so... helpless and pathetic. She spends most of the book crying, staring at nothing, being afraid of shadows and noises, throwing tantrums and latching so strongly to Dashti it's a wonder she leaves no physical marks. Sure, she has a past. Her own father locked her in a tower and left her to the rats. None of that is an excuse to act like a small child and be completely unable to do anything for yourself. Even when she finally DOES get some courage and starts DOING things, it's because of a cat??? Like, I didn't get that. Sure pets are great but *suddenly* she is smiling and working hard and just... she watched everyone else work their butts off thus far but it's a cat that makes her change so drastically?

Then we have Khan Tegus. Definitely a stand out in this. He's a king (but their title is "Khan") who has exchanged letters with Saren when they were younger and the two have promised to wed. Such as this, he comes once he hears of her imprisonment. Only, Saren is so scared to even utter a word that she makes Dashti pretend to be her. With Tegus being funny and sweet, and genuinely SUCH A GOOD GUY, there is no wonder the girl starts developing feelings for the fellow. I know I would.

Now, as much as I enjoyed this novel, and I really did, there were some things I just wasn't feeling.

* The Villian. He is just so flat. He's a king who wants to conquer everything (for no reason at all). I like my villains a bit more complicated and three dimensional--Pure evil for evil's sake just doesn't quite cut it for me.

* The world building is lacking. So this is a world where Muckers (farmers who have healing songs who don't really heal but just make the body remember to be whole), it has shamans, and it has healers. They have nine gods who are called The Ancestors and everyone worships them and follow their creed. There are eight kingdoms (I think), and all with weird ass names like Song for Evela. I had a REALLY hard time with those. They don't sound like countries?? And aside for some customs sprinkled about I felt like I knew NOTHING of these places. The mucker lifestyle is pretty heavily discussed tho.

* I don't need you to say "XX, Goddess of Z" every time you mention a god. I'm glad you know your system is hella confusing, but also it feels really odd in the story and I would hope we could understand from contextual clues which god it is without you explicitly telling us every single time. And they come up A LOT.

Anyways, those are minor issues. Overall a solid read.

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

Book of a Thousand Days is geared towards a younger audience than the Books of Bayern, and it demonstrates this with simple language, a straightforward plot, and flat characters–all of which combine to make the novel a little dull for readers able to follow something much more complicated. The journal format is an interesting choice for Hale, and she manages to make use of it on a couple occasions by having Dashti add notes “later” or write very short humorous entries when little happens on a particular day, but overall it just adds to the sense that the tale is very limited in scope. There are also some illustrations when Dashti writes “And the flap looked like this,” but they are mainly of characters and random things and do not really add much to the reader’s visualization of the tale. Book of a Thousand Days might be worth an afternoon if one has run out of other books to read, but there is no need to rush for it and I would not recommend spending the money to purchase it.

This review was also posted at Pages Unbound Book Reviews.

[wyvernfriend]

Loosely based on the Grimm Brothers Fairy Tale "Maid Maleen" , "Book of a Thousand Days" begins with the sealing in of maid Dashti and her mistress, Lady Saren. Saren has refused to marry Lord Khasar and her father imprisons her in a tower with enough food to last seven years to see if she would change her mind.

Dashi is a Mucker, or nomad, who has healing songs and an ability to cope. Saren has a break down when she realises that there is no way out.

This is told from the point of view of Dashi, it's a world a lot unlike the regular fantasy world and it's a good thing for that, Dashi is an interesting character and when Saren makes her pretend to be her she does question the morality of the act and does think it through on the page. She is a loyal servant who eventually gets a reward and the relationships in the story are well told and believable.

I look forward to reading more by Shannon Hale.

[sstaley]

This is one of my favorite Shannon Hale books. I especially like the way it is written; the heroine writes in her journal. This is also a fairy tale I had not read before, so it made it new and interesting for me.