Ogre Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (review)

In this late-arriving companion novel/prequel to Ella Enchanted (BCCB 5/97), the meddling fairy Lucinda is up to her usual tricks, this time turning Evie, a fifteen-year-old healer, into an ogre for refusing a marriage proposal from Evie's long-time best friend, Wormy. Lucinda gives her sixty-two days to receive and accept another proposal, or Evie will be doomed to remain an ogre forever. Readers familiar with Levine's world from either Ella or Fairest (BCCB 11/06) will know, and new readers will soon learn, that ogres are feared as much for their ravenous appetite for flesh as they are for their powers of persuasion, which enables them to eat their prey alive. Evie is therefore in danger of being killed by a mob, but more important to her is retaining the ability to ply her trade as a healer. When she joins a band of ogres and convinces them to refrain from eating humans, then, she wonders if she might be able to save more people as an ogre than as a human. Levine slyly integrates adolescent hormonal confusion into her portrayal of Evie, who mistakes her awakening human desire for good-looking young men for ogre-ish hunger. The author also joins her stories when Evie is befriended by a young Lady Eleanor, who ends the story pregnant with Ella. Like all of Levine's heroines, Evie is complex, career-oriented, and likable as she bears up under seriously extraordinary pressures. With enough grotesqueries to satisfy the most transgressive tastes of juvenile humor and enough light romance to balance the scales, this trips lightly over a wide range of emotional appeals. KC