Madison+B

=Madison B's 9th Grade Book Review=

What does keeping a promise mean to you? To Dashti ,a lady's maid in Shannon Hale's book Book of a Thousand Days, it means pretending to be Lady Saren while trying to get out of a tower, getting rid of Lord Khasar, and marring Khan Tegus. In this book Dashti puts of whole new meaning to keeping a promise. In this book I found a lot of things that I liked. The first being the drama. Through the whole book you can feel the drama just building and building. At first, I thought that it was only going to be about Dasthi and Lady Saren in the tower for seven years which sounded boring. However, people come and visit the two of them. Then later they get out and are now faced with new problems. This is not one of those books that just drag on and on, this book will make you react to it. While reading this book I would always think, "Why doesn't Lady Saren listen to Dashti?" I also would get so into the book that I would almost put it down because I would be so mad at a character. In my opinion Book of a Thousand Days is not a boring book. In fact, I thought it was so good that I read it in about a week and about two weeks later, read it a second time. Shannon Hale writes this book very well.With just one sentence you can feel all of Dashti's emotions. While reading through this book I picked out the feeling of boredom from being locked in a tower for almost three years, fear from when Lord Khasar put fire in the tower, anger when Lady Saren would not tell Khan Tegus who she was, and all the happiness at the end of the book. You could even feel all of Dashti's emotions when she goes to face Lord Khasar, who can turn into a giant wolf, and all of his army by herself with nothing to protect. Also when Dashti is locked up the dungeon expecting her death every night. In those two scenes there are a lot of emotions. The characters in this book I would say were done well. In this book the words for these characters would range from murder to brave to weak and scared. I say with a vary of characters like that it should all ready be an interesting book. The main character Dasthi would be described as brave, clever, and a very good person. She promised to be Lady Saren's maid and stay with her locked in a tower for seven years after they had known each other for a few minutes! Then she has to pretend to be Lady Saren to a lord and khan, in the land that Dashti lives pretending to be a gentry, a noble, is a sin. Lady Saren would be the weak and scared one. Through the whole book she is always crying and screaming that someone is trying to kill her. Luckily, at the end she finally stands up for herself. Lord Khasar would be the murderess figure. He gave up his soul to be able to turn into a wolf and destroyed Lady Saren's kingdom while she and Dashti where in the tower. Khan Tegus is the gentle one. He is kind and follows the base rules of the land. He is also kind enough to visit Dashti and Lady Saren while they are in the tower. The Book of a Thousand Days is one of my very favorite books.I love the diary style books. Also in my opinion it is easier to relate to Dashti then some other books. Instead of having a high place in society, Dashti starts almost at the bottom. She then works her way to be a lady's maid and then goes onto the most important three to four year of her life. Then at the end of the story Dashti marries Khan Tegus, being herself not Lady Saren. I like this because it shows that no matter what place you are in society, with time and hard work you can work your way to the top. In my opinion Shannon Hale did a very excellent job on this book. Also I am not the only one who thinks that, this book has gotten many awards and recognitions. Because of how well this book was written, I now want to read Shannon Hale's other books. However while reading this book I found a couple of things I did not like. The first being the beginning plot sounded very boring. I was really surprised I even picked up this book. However, I was interested about how the plot would change, and it really did. I am really glad I did picked up this book. The second was besides some pictures and a few body parts being described, you never really found out what the characters really look like. However, this does let the readers use their imaginations and in that way everyone can picture every single detail about the characters. There are only a few books that I really love and I love to read so I have read a lot of books. Book of a Thousand Days is one of those few books I really love. I have already recommend this book to my sister and I plan to recommend it to others.