Book of a Thousand Days

Author:  Shannon Hale

Rating:  4

Summary:  Dashti has just finished her training for being a lady’s maid, when her lady is locked away in a tower.  Dashti has a choice- remain loyal to her maid, and be locked away in the tower with her, or remain free and get another job.  Dashti chooses to be locked away with her lady for the next seven years, and she keeps record of those days, and the adventures thereafter, in her journal.  Through the course of Dashti’s story, her lady orders her to pretend to be her, while talking to royalty outside of the tower.  If Dashti is caught, she will be put to death.

Violence and gore:  Almost every single fantasy book will have a violence and gore parent alert on it, because there's swords a lot of the time, and people are stabbed.  There is a man in this story that can turn into a wolf beast, and he goes on killing sprees in the night, leaving his victims with their intestines outside of their bodies.  The wolf man kills an entire kingdom, and several random people on the side.  Towards the end of the book, Dashti is attacked by the monster, and suffers a broken ankle.  

Sexual content and symbolism of rape:  In the recordings of Dashti, it holds an anecdote of Lady Saren and her experience with a grown man she was betrothed to when she was ten years old.  Lady Saren has spent almost the entire book being terrified of this man, and it’s revealed that it’s because he is a wolf man, and kills people in the night.  She recounts the night she found out, and says she asked for him to come out into the courtyard, where he proceeds to take his clothes off.  Then, he begins to transform into a monster, and she is terrified of the monster and the man for the rest of her life.  In my opinion, this is meant to symbolize rape, and sexual abuse.

  When Dashti and Lady Saren escape the tower, it is because Dashti hears men outside, tearing the tower down.  She hears the men talking about two young girls inside, and they’re intentions to rape them when they get inside.  Dashti kisses a royal gentry, and at another time she has to prove that she is weaponless to an enemy, so she strips naked.

Magic:  In it, Dashti refers to herself as a ‘mucker.’  A mucker is kind of like gypsies, except they’re more fine with staying in one place.  But there is a sort of healing magic that muckers can do, that Dashti is very good at.  She sings ‘songs of ailment.’  While these songs aren’t supposed to heal people- only “make their bones remember what it once was to be whole”- Dashti does manage to heal a man from a stab wound.

Religion:  Dashti and everyone else in the city worship and pray to their ancestors, and believe that they guide and protect them.  They also believe in an assembly of gods, which they model their government after.

Morals:  Lady Saren is very difficult throughout this book, and Dashti is a great example of how you should treat difficult people.  Of course, Lady Saren is probably suffering from some mental illness, which means this is also a story of how to deal someone with a mental illness- even a physical illness.  Ultimately, it’s a story which challenges you to treat every person with kindness and love.

Girls, 13-14 years old, fantasy