Book Talk discussion

I am currently reading Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale. I love Graceling by Kristin Cashore (http://kristincashore.blogspot.com/), and last time I was perusing her blog, she said she was reading this book and loving it...so I figured I would give it a try.

I am not yet finished with it...but I can't say I'm loving it. It is written first person from the POV of Dashti - a ladies maid who was locked into a tower with her mistress. I'm not really believing in Dashti as a character. She seems phony, and is therefore annoying to me. In fact, almost everyone in the book is kind of annoying. I am hoping that the author will do some fancy magic in the last few chapters and make sense of it all, but I'm not holding my breath.

It is readable, so I'm not skimming my way through it, I'm actually reading it...but I have literally rolled my eyes a few times, and clenched my jaw.
I'll update when I finally finish the book.

So I finished the book. And it did get better - the story line picked up a bit, and it had a nice ending. But it was too bogged down in sloppy crap to be really interesting. It is based on a fairy tale in Bros. Grimm called "Maid Maleen." Hale changed the story around a bit, and unfortunately made it stupider.

Okay, so here are my objections. Spoilers galore.
The character of "Dashti"....she is some sort of wide-eyed Pollyanna servant girl. Which I find a bit insulting. She seems so thrilled and happy to serve the whim of her unhinged? insane? weirdly demanding princess, that she just seems a bit brain damaged. And I think I'm supposed to like her for it, but instead I find her a bit lame and disappointing a lot of the time. She got better at the conclusion of the story, when she single-handedly faces and defeats the bad guy.

And why did it take Dashti so long to figure out the bad guy was a werewolf? It made her seem stupid. And why did Hale add a werewolf into the story? It felt like a weird and forced attempt to explain why Lady Saren (the princess Dashti serves) is so shattered and unhinged. But it didn't really "go" anywhere.

I didn't hate the book, like I said I actually read it - as opposed to skimming and then giving up.
And there were a number of things I did like. For example - the trial at the end of the story that served up what seemed to be the most important victory: Lady Saren finally finds her voice. I also liked that Lady Saren didn't start to heal until she received the unconditional love of My Lord the cat. All of Dashti's singing and fussing didn't help her much, probably because it wasn't based on love, but rather her strange Pollyanna duty.

But I wouldn't call the book great, and I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone, except that I want someone else to read it and give their opinion. I might be missing or ignoring some things that make the book much better than I'm giving it credit for. Help me.

Give yourself credit, you're probably right.