I, Coriander is about a girl whose mother comes from a different world as her father. After her mother mysteriously dies, she has to find out what her mother had kept from her but was already unraveling while she was still alive. Silver shoes are the transport between the two worlds. Coriander has to save her mother´s world and shadow from the evil Queen Rosemore. Meanwhile she is being bullied by her new stepmother, her father being away in an unknown place.
Coriander is a girl living in the seventeenth century who grows up in London by the Thames. She is curious and adventurous, despite facing a lot of difficulties and tragedies. She sometimes likes to bend the rules and has lots of fun. She also does a lot against what she feels is wrong and is persistent and resilient with it. If Coriander has her mind set on something, she does not usually decide against it. She feels a strong need to get a lot fair and right.
Coriander switches between her father’s real world and her mother’s fairytale world. She also has to save her mothers fairytale world from the evil Queen Rosemoore and stop her destroying the fairytale world. She has to let them combine properly.
Coriander must recover her mother’s shadow before Queen Rosemore has the chance to fulfill her dream and destroy the bright fairy tale world. On this quest, Coriander finds out about the different difficulties of life, the history of her mother and the fairy tale land she is from. She gets to know the prince, his dilemma and only she can help him get it right with the help of her mother’s shadow. Closer to the end Queen Rosemore gets really angry and sets her sights on Coriander.
Coriander grows in confidence and gets mature and responsible as the book goes on. She also gets taller and a lot older. I think Coriander learns a lot about her mother’s land and problems. She also discovers her mother’s past, her difficulties and decisions. Additionally she finds out about the fairy tale countries, legends, myths, problems and a bit of its history.
The theme is that good will always, hopefully, win against evil and it is set in a time where a child is growing up to become a woman in Cromwell’s England.
The reader can see this clearly when Coriander comes out of her chest and finds herself three years older than before. Finally, her parents’ friends’ son is asking for Coriander’s hand in marriage.
I enjoyed the fact that this book is a mix between a historical story of the seventeenth century but also a surprisingly mythical, legendary, quite believable and challenging fairy tale that contains lots of life’s main issues and problems.
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