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I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. There were so many things I both liked and disliked about it. In fact, I think it's very similar to how I felt about the Six of Crows series. There was a lot of good potential, but too much time spent on characters or plot points that weren't exactly relevant.

Summary
Sleeping beauty (aka Poly) is woken up by a cranky wizard. Unfortunately, something has gone wrong and she still finds herself falling asleep, even though the spell is supposedly broken. Also she has magic...of some kind. Poly sets off with the wizard who woke her up, so that she can return her to some mysterious council who sent him. (Why does she go along with him? I don't know.) As she travels with him she realizes that someone is trying to keep her from remembering something important, something about who she is that could change the fate of history.


First of all, this book is definitely in the same vein as Diana Wynne Jone's novels and Robin McKinley's. There's definitely some inspiration from Howl's Moving Castle in both the setting, characters and world building. Also in how the author writes about and describes magic itself. It can get very abstract very quickly, and truthfully a bit difficult to follow.

My biggest complaint with this book is that it felt a bit unfinished, and unpolished in some places, which really made me disappointed because it could have been so much more with further editing. There were a lot of scenes and sections of the book that could have been tightened up. The ending was a bit rushed, and there were places where I lost track of where different characters were and what they were doing. Not because the descriptions were abstract, but rather the author forgot to mention a character was in a scene, or sitting down, or in a forest etc. and then it took me by surprise.


Pros
The first three chapters (heck the first chapter) of this book sucked me in. The writing, characters, world etc were all very intriguing. The characters were hilarious! And there was lots of good dialogue right off the bat. The action started right away, it was fast-paced, lots of conflict....but then it kind of fizzled out and lost moment until the last three chapters of the book.

I think if you like both Diana Wynne Jones and Robin McKinley, I think you would also appreciate this book to a certain extent. It definitely has the same tone and flavor as books by both of those authors.

Luck is a hilarious character in my opinion. He's very reminiscent of Howl and Sherlock from the BBC series in that he's obsessive about solving a particular problem to the point of completely disregarding other people's needs (or even presence).

Poly herself was likeable and interesting, up until about halfway through the book. Then I felt like I wanted to shake her half of the time, she just kept making such dumb decisions that should have gotten her killed, but somehow it all worked out?

Cons
The plot left a little to be desired in that things are wrapped up too quickly, unexpectedly, and some plot threads are even left hanging.

There was far too much giggling. If there's one thing I can't stand in a book, it's a heroine who giggles. Maybe the author meant to use this word to mean laughing? I'm not sure. But the word giggles is typically a term reserved for flirtatious and empty-headed side characters. Not your MC for crying out loud! This was especially troubling as the author goes to a lot of work to portray Poly as competent and smart.

Onepiece drove me crazy. If you haven't read the book, Onepiece is a boy who was magically enchanted into a dog. Somehow he transforms between both forms at whim. He is constantly interjecting his thoughts into the scenes, maintaining a non-stop stream of consciousness. When he wasn't babbling about random things Poly was comforting him or say "oh darling" every other sentence. There were huge chunks of chapters dedicating to describing his antics.... and he was in EVERY SCENE. Man! Just when I thought Poly was going to go off on her own for once and take a break...NOPE...guess who she brought along with her? The insufferable Onepiece! I think I could have managed better if the author had cut out the amount of time with him by 80%. He didn't impact the plot in any meaningful way, he didn't change or alter the main characters in any meaningful way either. Basically, he served no purpose other than to entertain? That said he was more annoying than entertaining. If he had at least had a purpose in the larger plot (and way less airtime) I think he could have been a bearable (even lovable for some people) addition to the book.

Poly's love life and non-stop flirting.
Don't get me wrong, the author makes a point to say that Poly doesn't flirt, that she doesn't care what people think...yada yada yada. Yet every description and interaction between Poly and different male characters completely contradicted that. Everywhere she goes she's inexplicably attracting suitors! Before having any good reason to trust them, and despite the fact that someone is trying to kill her, she trusts them all basically immediately. Why? If I was her, I would be concerned that they were feigning interest in order to kill me. Why did that thought never cross her mind? I'm not sure, all I can say is the main villain, Mordian, could have gotten the job done a lot quicker if he'd just disguised himself as one of her many admirers. He flirts with her, she flirts back. They go on a nice long quiet walk in a deserted forest, and the story would be over.

Why the heck did Poly go along with Luck?
Luck, the wizard who rescues her, tells her that he has to return her to the Wizard Council in exchange for some books? The Wizard who ordered her to be woken up is named Mordian, the same name as a villain she remembers from her past.
Weird?
She decides to just go along with him (for the heck of it?) I'm not sure why. She doesn't make any of her own plans, and barely questions why the Wizard Council wanted her woken up in the first place. It seems so odd. She's just so quick to trust people, that given her circumstances and personality, it seems she would be a little more distrustful.

I'll probably have more to say about this later, after I process a bit more. Again, I feel like most of the cons I listed could have been addressed with more editing. Different pieces of the story were rushed (her friendships with characters, different action scenes etc.) while others dragged on for far too long. This story had so much potential! I just wished it could have been refined a bit more.