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11/6/08 12:40 am - I can't believe I just read that
-____- I CANNOT
BELIEVE
WHAT I JUST READ.
I barely finished reading The Princess and Curdie. I dubbed it as the story I swore to finish by reading solely on the toilet. (Although in the end I had to read outside the bathroom to actually finish it within the century.) I have to say. I don't think I will EVER read a book with the kind of ending this one has. T__T; I just don't get it. The Princess and the Goblin was such a warm, beautiful, comforting book. X__x; This sequel (Princess & Curdie) was dark, I lost count of how many people and creatures/animals got stabbed and/or killed.
There were several parts from the middle ahead where the story was horribly Christian. Not to bash any Christian faith or anything, but for some reason I have a dislike for biblical undertones in stories. There were several passages that seemed very preachy, which I didn't like. I think the only thing that made me happy was knowing that the princess and the miner get married eventually.
SPOILER complaint though I doubt anyone will ever read this book:
Basically in the end, Curdie helps Princess Irene restore the kingdom with good, honest people, like it should be. (The story was spent with the king's people doubting him and his servants poisoning him. O__o; ) You get a one paragraph telling of how... Goodness, it's so short. Would you just read the last chapter? T__T;; My goodness, I can't believe it just ENDED like that... If you don't want to read the whole thing, just check out the last three paragraphs. ;___;
CHAPTER 35
The End
The king sent Curdie out into his dominions to search for men and women that had human hands. And many such he found, honest and true, and brought them to his master. So a new and upright court was formed, and strength returned to the nation.
But the exchequer was almost empty, for the evil men had squandered everything, and the king hated taxes unwillingly paid. Then came Curdie and said to the king that the city stood upon gold. And the king sent for men wise in the ways of the earth, and they built smelting furnaces, and Peter brought miners, and they mined the gold, and smelted it, and the king coined it into money, and therewith established things well in the land.
The same day on which he found his boy, Peter set out to go home. When he told the good news to Joan, his wife, she rose from her chair and said, 'Let us go.' And they left the cottage, and repaired to Gwyntystorm. And on a mountain above the city they built themselves a warm house for their old age, high in the clear air.
As Peter mined one day, at the back of the king's wine Cellar, he broke into a cavern crusted with gems, and much wealth flowed therefrom, and the king used it wisely.
Queen Irene - that was the right name of the old princess - was thereafter seldom long absent from the palace. Once or twice when she was missing, Barbara, who seemed to know of her sometimes when nobody else had a notion whither she had gone, said she was with the dear old Uglies in the wood. Curdie thought that perhaps her business might be with others there as well. All the uppermost rooms in the palace were left to her use, and when any one was in need of her help, up thither he must go. But even when she was there, he did not always succeed in finding her. She, however, always knew that such a one had been looking for her.
Curdie went to find her one day. As he ascended the last stair, to meet him came the well-known scent of her roses; and when he opened the door, lo! there was the same gorgeous room in which his touch had been glorified by her fire! And there burned the fire - a huge heap of red and white roses. Before the hearth stood the princess, an old grey-haired woman, with Lina a little behind her, slowly wagging her tail, and looking like a beast of prey that can hardly so long restrain itself from springing as to be sure of its victim. The queen was casting roses, more and more roses, upon the fire. At last she turned and said, 'Now Lina!' - and Lina dashed burrowing into the fire. There went up a black smoke and a dust, and Lina was never more seen in the palace.
Irene and Curdie were married. The old king died, and they were king and queen. As long as they lived Gwyntystorm was a better city, and good people grew in it. But they had no children, and when they died the people chose a king. And the new king went mining and mining in the rock under the city, and grew more and more eager after the gold, and paid less and less heed to his people. Rapidly they sank toward their old wickedness. But still the king went on mining, and coining gold by the pailful, until the people were worse even than in the old time. And so greedy was the king after gold, that when at last the ore began to fail, he caused the miners to reduce the pillars which Peter and they that followed him had left standing to bear the city. And from the girth of an oak of a thousand years, they chipped them down to that of a fir tree of fifty.
One day at noon, when life was at its highest, the whole city fell with a roaring crash. The cries of men and the shrieks of women went up with its dust, and then there was a great silence.
Where the mighty rock once towered, crowded with homes and crowned with a palace, now rushes and raves a stone-obstructed rapid of the river. All around spreads a wilderness of wild deer, and the very name of Gwyntystorm had ceased from the lips of men.
I've finally deleted The Princess and Curdie from my PDA, and although The Princess and the Goblin will remain very close to my heart, I'll choose to forget its sequel and pretend that it never happened, and that I'd never read it.
Originally posted on tiff-chan.vox.com
calm
amused
excited
forgiving
content
relaxed
anxious