A Review of Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer
4 Stars. Best enjoyed wrapped in a blanket thinking of all that snow!
I’m obsessed with fairy tales. Not just any fairy tales, but the kind where the author rehashes the old tropes and injects some steroids into the often meek heroines that plague the originals, creating a stronger & smarter female lead. There are very few fairy tales where this doesn’t need to happen, and most mainstream classic Disney-type stories are often guilty of containing weaker protagonists.
However, these are the stories that act as the gateway drug into the world of the folkloric fiction found in anthologies containing the likes of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. It was in one of these anthologies where I found one of my absolute favorite fairy tales, East of the Sun, West of the Moon. When I see new fiction which claims to take its basis off of this story, I jump on it. Echo North was one that made such claims–and delivered quite well.
Our protagonist, Echo, is a sympathetic character who has been deemed as ‘lesser’ and ‘cursed’ by the people in her village because of the horrific scarring on her face caused by a white wolf whom she was trying to save from a trap when she was a mere child. This act of compassion led basically to social exile. However, she never lost the kindness in her heart or her compassionate nature, even when the only people in the village who looked at her as a person were her father and brother. Her new stepmother, whom her father brings home, seems revolted by Echo. Echo decides to try to leave for university in the nearest city, an endeavor which is sufficiently roadblocked by this vile woman whom has quickly driven her once somewhat prosperous father into poverty. In order to try to improve their conditions, her father ventures out to sell his most prized possessions just to keep them fed and housed. Many months pass without his return.
Echo’s father goes missing, but the Wolf returns.
The Wolf gives Echo a choice: She can let her father die, or she can save him in exchange for spending one year with him in a house in the middle of a deadly forest where the rooms must be kept sewn to the rest of the house. She chooses to save her father.
In going with the wolf and staying in the house for one year, she must follow two simple rules: don’t open the door at night, no matter what is heard, and do not light the lamp.
The bulk of the story follows East/West pretty well, but the ending–Oh The Glorious Ending. It absolutely took me into a brand new place. Although I was able to suss out a lot of the midway plot points, the end was so far beyond what I could have guessed it would be and it was so very beautiful and completely fulfilling in its unpredictability. Naturally, some of the magic revolves around the big ‘L’ word.
“What is the oldest magic?” “Love. That is what created the universe, and that is what will destroy it, in the end. Threads of old magic, binding the world together.”
The overall imagery and well thought out protagonist help to keep the story going at a fair clip, even though there is a slight slow down in the plot, but that’s to be expected as she is staying in the house for a year. She almost makes that full year, too…it if not for [spoiler] the Wolf Queen and her meddling. But Echo doesn’t give up, despite the trials she endures in her life and the trials she must endure to save the boy hidden within the wolf, no–she persists.
That’s my favorite part.
Always Lost in Words 