Photo de l'auteur

Anna Sheehan

Auteur de A Long, Long Sleep

3 oeuvres 493 utilisateurs 72 critiques

Séries

Œuvres de Anna Sheehan

A Long, Long Sleep (2011) 452 exemplaires
No Life But This (2014) 23 exemplaires
Spinning Thorns (2015) 18 exemplaires

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Date de naissance
1979-09-06
Sexe
female
Lieux de résidence
Oregon, USA

Membres

Critiques

Oh, oh this book. I was inclined to read it because its a scifi twist on Sleeping Beauty (plus at least one other fairy tale I can't put my finger on), but this book was WONDERFUL. It was perfect; perhaps not technically perfect, but it was perfect for the time I was reading it. There's a scene, near the end, when Rose is confronted with a lot of harsh truths really quickly and I had tears pouring down my face. This reminded me of The Adoration of Jenna Fox (by Mary J. Pearson) actually as both dealt with gaps in memory and struggling with identity.

From an outsider perspective, Rose's memories don't match up quite right from the get go. Not just the fact she knew her boyfriend Xavier from he was in diapers, aging next to him in fits and spurts until they were the same age finally. Someone mentions she should be in her late 70's, based on the birthdate they found and she muses silently that she's really more like a hundred years old given all the times she's been "stassed" (put into stasis) throughout her childhood.

Her casual acceptance of this goes from worrisome to outright disturbing when a character--the boy who found her, Bren, says she uses being stassed like a drug to escape. Little things throughout the novel start to make more horrifying sense.

And then there's the ultimate revelations close to the end that just...this poor girl. The twist with the person hunting her was surprising, but fits in so well with everything we found out that its almost sickening too.

I found her friendship with Otto, a teen boy part of a hybrid/genetic experiment done by her parents' company while she was stassed, to be fascinating. Unable to 'talk' with each other, their conversations by instant messenger are far more revealing then any other discussion. The anonymity of the screen helps them both I think.

This isn't a fast paced book; Rose slips in and out of her memories often, and her memories aren't told sequentially for the most part. She's also rather...vague as a personality at first. Partially because when her parents were alive she didn't have one really. They told her where to go, what to wear, how to talk. The only time she really acted on her own was when she was with Xavier, but even then she was so afraid of her parents taking it away she didn't really act on her own.

A unique retelling of the sleeping beauty fairy tale, this princess overcomes her demons and figures out how to save herself.
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Signalé
lexilewords | 69 autres critiques | Dec 28, 2023 |
It struck me that there aren't very many Sleeping Beauty re-tellings. The fairy-tale subgenre tends to be peppered with tons of Cinderella, and smaller numbers of Beauty & and the Beasts and Little Red Riding Hoods. Sleeping Beauty tends to be overlooked. Which is fair, because it's a harder story to translate to a non-traditional fairy tale setting. After all, how can you plausibly have a girl asleep for 100 years?

This book tackled that question and surprising, it worked. It helped that Sheehan wasn't 100% faithful to the story, and mainly used the premise as a launching point. The book begins with Rose being taken out of stasis and learning that her entire life has changed. Rather than focusing on the happily ever after of a fairy tale, this book focuses on the after.

Unlike some reviewers, I was hooked from the beginning. The slow start made sense to me because Rose started slowly - her body and brain were recovering from being in stasis for over 60 years, and she was emotionally withdrawn and lives in her memories. The story picks up when it turns out there is something trying to kill her, and she is forced to face the truths of her memories, and her family.

This was a great stand-alone book, but it seems like the author sets up for a potential sequel or two. I'm happy either way. Rose's story ended perfectly. But I'd also welcome more in this world.
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Signalé
wisemetis | 69 autres critiques | Dec 26, 2022 |
Damn OMG this book... I want to read it so, so badly
 
Signalé
SapphireMoonlight23 | 69 autres critiques | Aug 5, 2021 |
I loved and adored Sheehan's first book, A LONG, LONG SLEEP, and was happy to see there was a second book in the series. However, it took my years to finally start reading it, in part I think because I was worried it wouldn't live up to the first. Therefore, it took a little bit for me to remember what had happened prior and who the different characters were.

I was surprised that the focus of this book was not on Rose's search for her other siblings, but on Otto, who is dying. In an attempt to save him, Rose et al take him to Jupiter's Ice Moon for experimental treatment.

Really, this story should be divorced from the first one because while the characters are the same and the plot continues from the first book, the feel and focus is greatly different. That said, it was a completely worthwhile book to read and I enjoyed it immensely, once I realized that it was exploring a new direction that I had previously not expected. This is also much more science-fictiony than the first book, which might be jarring for readers, but I enjoyed.

That said -- there were some ethical boundaries that characters crossed in this book that I really did not like, and I felt that Sheehan needed more discussion about them. It is obvious that Rose is greatly damaged, as is Otto, and that consent is questionable even when it was given. In some sense, I think I would have preferred if the character had had sex, instead of the mental melding and borderline mind-rape that occurred. That scene was intensely disturbing to read.

But. At the end, there was a brief dangling plot point regarding Rose's missing siblings, and I really hope that Sheehan gets the opportunity to explore that in a later book. I want to read that story!
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½
 
Signalé
wisemetis | 1 autre critique | Dec 7, 2020 |

Prix et récompenses

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Statistiques

Œuvres
3
Membres
493
Popularité
#50,127
Évaluation
3.8
Critiques
72
ISBN
28
Langues
3

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