Review: How to Break an Evil Curse

How to Break an Evil Curse by Laura Morrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Allow me to impersonate Stanley Hudson from the Office:


Fantasy is fantasy is fantasy is fantasy.

In other words, stop with the subgenres. Look, they exist for a reason. If you never get past what a book isn't, then you'll never appreciate a book for what is it.


Every other review I've seen makes sure to mention that this is a Fractured Fairy Tale or that this book is falsely advertised as high fantasy when it is really low fantasy. This makes me think of dog lovers. If I buy a dog and name it after your ex, will you like the dog less? This is a bad example for me because I don't like animals but hopefully you do enough for the point to still stand.

I liked this book until I hated it and then I learned to love it.

I had issues as well with typecasting. This book isn't witty enough to be The Princess Bride. It isn't clever enough to be Into the Woods. It isn't witty AND clever enough to be a Discworld Novel. Or silly for that matter. But it comes so close to all three that I realized that my attempts at disliking it for what it isn't overshadowed the brilliance for what it was.

What surprised me was that the story the book leads in with is not the story we end up with. There are two girls whose destinies lead them in opposite directions. One is due to marry the Prince. The other has no soul and is sentenced to exile in a cave after plotting to overthrow the crown with an evil wizard who happens to be the Prince's kind of best friend but not really. Conroy, the Prince, is shattered by Farland's betrayal. Farland goes one step further to announce that the firstborn heir of Conroy will be cursed to never be able to step foot in the sun or else they die. There are conditions to break the evil curse involving whom the heir is supposed to fall in love with because that's what happens in these types of books. We flash forward Nineteen years and follow Julianna, the cursed, as she works to escape her dungeon turned bedroom. She lives with three ghosts, one of whom accompanies her on her adventure. Our other main character is Warren, the curse breaker who is not the type to rescue a damsel in distress if you get my meaning. He is the son in a sea-traveling theater troupe who plays a few instruments and has morals but not muscle to rely on. His sister, Corrine, also travels with him to protect him after Farland makes an attempt on his life. Our two leads cross paths and rely on each other to set things right. There's also a subplot involving a revolution that develops throughout the book but is destined to find itself in the sequels.

I believe I saw, possibly in the dedication, that this book was originally made up as a bedtime story for the author's children. The beginning had that feel to it. It finds itself towards the middle when suddenly the book goes from humorous to humorously bonkers. The lack of seriousness mixed with weirdness is special. One example of this would be as Julianna is stalking an intended target to prove her worthiness in order to have access to a tunnel in and out of the castle *breath* the narrator mentions that the reason we are focussing on Julianna is that our other characters are sleeping. Just in case we wanted to still check in with them, the narrator then explains what it was like for them to be sleeping in the inn with details about noises they are making, and creaking, and restlessness. What other books can you name tells you that the characters are doing something as unimportant as sleeping but if you really insist on knowing proceeds to tell you anyway? The narrator, I will say, is almost as much of a character as the storyteller from Into the Woods. Little side comments make the book shine.

Another detail I liked was nearer to the end during a rescue mission, our group finds themselves trying to figure out the location of bodies of water nearby and there's a little post with a box containing maps of the area and it's clearly referential to the maps you find in forest and nature preservations. Paid for and provided by so and so.

Not everything worked for me. There's a basin and then vial of mixed Ravens blood which talks to specific people. I didn't care for that at all. One reason is that it constantly uses the word "Bro." Here is the biggest sin of the book. There are numerous uses of Man, Dude, Bro, and Yo. I'm sure there was something else I hadn't bothered to write down. It takes the silliness and sophistication of the book and knocks it down a few levels. I felt hatred in my heart the more I came across this. It practically ruined everything else on the page. Bro is bad enough but Dude has no place in fantasy literature, or even in the English language for that matter. I think we should vote it out but some of us have problems voting things out that don't belong.

I've seen critiques on character development. I don't agree. This book takes place over a short period of time and I do think Julianna and Warren are in different places than where they started. Julianna is a girl who wants to explore the world unknown to her but now sees the trouble within the kingdom and understands the people who speak out against her family. There's more growth to be sure but she openly opposes her father's totalitarian control and his desire for the big secret of the book to be kept hidden. Warren doesn't have completely as much development but I believe by the end of book one he is beginning to see that his fate has more in store for him. The plot of this book isn't as epic as people are arguing it should be but this is the start of the journey. Book One. We have the base of conflict and we have two villainous characters that we can enjoy with all their evil plotting. If you have trouble relating just imagine Tim Curry as Farland. That'll put this in perspective for you.

At it's worse points, I would have given it a three bordering on a two..but it pulled itself together and makes me want to read the sequel. It will never be perfect with the dudes and the bros, but I'll look past it for a lighthearted change.

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