ONCE UPON A DREAM: A TWISTED TALE

ONCE UPON A DREAM: A TWISTED TALE by Liz Braswell

Well here goes on Once Upon a Dream by Liz Braswell. We have a lot of girls in our house of varying ages. Most of these girls have had a love for fairy tales at one time or another. That love grew into fairy tale retellings, and there are some really good ones out there! Unfortunately Once Upon a Dream does not make the cut for us!

SPOILER ALERT

Based on the classic Disney cartoon of Sleeping Beauty, Once Upon a Dream takes place in Aurora's mind as she is sleeping. Maleficent was killed in life, by Prince Philip, but she is able to attach her soul to Aurora and create a dream world where she is queen and Aurora is her ward. If she can complete her plan she will live and rule again in the real world, but there is a serious price tag for that to happen - that Aurora not wake up before her 16th birthday.

Inside Aurora's dream, Maleficent is the one who cares for the kingdom. She has penned everyone up inside the castle to protect them from the supposedly destroyed Outside. Aurora's parents are prisoners in the dungeon because they were horrible rulers and terrible parents. After all, they gave their daughter away to be raised by fairies and never truly cared for her. So begins the framework for our "Twisted Tale." So our brain begins to adjust that the good ones are really the bad ones and the bad one is really the good one. So what?

To keep this simpler I'm just going to bullet point my issues with the book-

-Maleficent's henchmen are actually demons that she has summoned from Hell. The references to them are too numerous to document here. They come sometimes in the forms of loved ones and Aurora must try and figure out if they are the real person or the demon that she is killing. They appear as little children. They appear as great hideous beasts. To say they are troubling is an understatement.

-To remain alive in the dream Maleficent must have the blood of one of the people every month. This is done by plunging a special stone knife into their chest, chanting a spell, and collecting the blood in the orb on top of her scepter. This includes killing Aurora's parents.

- There is a reference regarding suicide- the people are depressed while kept inside the castle, so some of them commit suicide. At one point Aurora is depressed and considers suicide herself.

- Death scenes include details that are a little more gory in detail - shredding flesh, opening innards, delicious crunches as bodies are crushed, etc.

- There is a fair amount of language in the book.

- When Prince Phillip and Aurora are traveling together and have to stop to sleep he places his sword between them, then proceeds to stumble over an explanation that it's to keep them from having sex.

I really struggle with books like this marketed for 12-year-olds with Disney as the publisher. If something doesn't make the cut at our house, it hits the trashcan. After our discussion that's where this one will go.