Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia C. Wrede

Patricia C. Wrede reports in her afterward to her book that Snow White and Rose Red was one of her favorite fairy tales as a child, but when rereading it for this book as an adult, she realized how many plot holes the original book actually had. In her book she does a marvelous job of filling those plot holes with a story set in Elizabethan England and the mystical, magical Faerie of myth and legend.  In her version, John Dee and Edward Kelly, real men who lived during this time, cast a spell that traps Hugh, price of Faerie, and turns him into a monstrous bear. Snow White and Rose Red, or in this version Blanche and Rosamund, and Hugh's brother John must then find out what ails the prince and cure him of the wicked spell that has been cast upon him. One objection I have to this book is Wrede's feeling that she had to write the dialogue in Elizabethan English. I know that was the setting of her novel, but sometimes all those "thees" and "thous" makes for slow reading!