Review (Audiobook) - Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand by Gail Carson Levine

"The mermaid Soop has sent a flood to Fairy Haven! Water-talent fairy Rani must bring Soop a wand or the Home Tree and all the Never faeries will be swept away. But wise Mother Dove isn't sure which is worse, a wand or a flood. Wand wishes, tantalizing wand wishes, are risky. The Most innocent wish can cause untold trouble. And not even Mother Dove knows that wands have hearts and minds - kind hearts or cruel hearts, sympathetic minds or minds filled with spite and mischief.

Rani, Tinker Bell, and Ree, queen of the Never fairies, set out on a perilous quest for a wand, a journay that takes them across an ocean to the palace of the terrifying Great Wanded fairies. Many obstacles stand between the questers and success: Tink's disappearance, a mermaid's magical song, wand madness, and even Never Land itself. Meanwhile, the floodwaters are rising...." (back cover)

Peter Pan is my favorite Disney movie (don't look for many similarities though between his movie and the Disney Fairy books, though), and I enjoy the other Disney Fairy books, but this book/audiobook was disappointing, starting with the description (above). I feel about both the description and the book that there are too many unnecessary distractions and that the book/description was written too fast without enough revision. I also found the last paragraph of the description too depressing to add to the body above, but it includes a bit about the story being a warning of the "dangers of dreams coming true"; so a big *CRUSH* to all you kids' dreams out there...It's a Children's book - lighten up!

It might be due to the high standards I now have for audiobook narrators after Josephine Bailey, but I was unimpressed with Rosalyn Landor. In the beginning she sounded far too proper; I could tell from the introduction that this woud be a book I'd rather read than listen to. To whoever assigns the narrator to a specific book, I simply can not imagine most fairies having an English accent. I found Tink to be too much of a whiner (if that's a word), and several of the characters sounded too much alike.

I found this audiobook difficult to pay attention to. If I stopped paying attention even for what seemed like only a moment, I was really confused as to what was going on. Other times when I was listening, the book still seemed to randomly switch directions multiple times.

The first CD/first third of the book had too much unnecessary repetition. It reminded me of when I was young and would write stories where every line of dialogue would have to include "he said" or "she said" - every fairy had to share their wish and every fairy had to ask Mother Dove if they could go to the mainland. I would imagine it to be less annoying to skim over those lines in a book rather than have to listen to every fairy say this or that.

I almost gave up on listening to the book, but I did wind up holding out to the end. The second half of the book wasn't that bad to listen to. Rosalyn seemed to get into her characters more, and overall the story wasn't terrible.

I have read Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg and I don't think it is necessary to read it first, even though it is classified as a prequel.

Amazon recommends this audiobook for ages 4 - 8, but I think this is a little young. The book is 208 pages/3 CDs, and does contain brief mentionings about fairies dying by drowning. Personally, I would suggest ages 7 - 10.

My Rating: