Gr 5-9Marjan, a young storyteller in ancient Persia, inadvertently takes a new story to Shahrazad. The Queen has been entertaining her husband for nearly 1000 nights and she's growing desperate. The Sultan loves the tale, which he vaguely remembers from his childhood, but requests the ending. Shahrazad makes the girl a part of the harem in order to get it, but learns that she has told all that she knows. Marjan leaves the harem, a dangerous move indeed, and tracks down an old man at the bazaar who was the source. She makes some surprising connections between the outside world and the harem and, in a final face to face with the Sultan, reveals much about herself, the power of story, and the grace of redemption. There are no weak spots in the telling of this tale. Even the minor characters make real impressions. The voices are clear and the dialogue works beautifully. As strong as these points are, it is the structure that really makes this book sing. Everything is carefully laid out for readers in a measured fashion that keeps the pages turning. The "Lessons for Life and Storytelling" that open each chapter boldly state the truths any storyteller knows and are echoed in the narrative. Marjan's crippled foot perfectly mirrors the Sultan's crippled trust. In both of their cases, it is a story that breaks through the flinty walls around their hearts. After much tension and adventure, there are believable, happy endings all around. An elegantly written novel that will delight and entertain even as it teaches, just as any good tale does.Patricia A. Dollisch, DeKalb County Public Library, Decatur, GA

Here's an engrossing retelling of a familiar but exotic tale set inside a harem. Shahrazad, the Sultan's present wife, tells him a different story every night. The narrator is Marjan, her clubfooted servant and a fine storyteller herself.

Surely, the most famous storyteller of all time is Scheherazade (or, as Susan Fletcher renders the spelling, Sharazad), whose tales became the foundation for the popularly titled Arabian Nights. But just how did she acquire this vast repertoire? Fletcher offers a plausible explanation in a suspenseful first-person novel in which Marjan, an orphan crippled by a cruel mischance, becomes involved in palace politics as a handmaiden to the fabled princess and as a discoverer of new stories, thus becoming one source for some of the thousand and one tales used by Sharazad to save her life. The style, in its re-creation of life in a Persian harem and city, is descriptive but not lush, advantageously restrained. Although the dialogue sometimes suggests modern sensibilities in observations on the fate of women or in phrases such as "we'll sort this through," the author makes no claims for complete verisimilitude, indicating in an appended note the extent of her reliance on Burton's edition of the tales. Fletcher puts her own spin on the source material, telling a tale in which the pace is consistent, the characters interesting, and the plot impelling. The conclusion is particularly notable for its avoidance of implausible senti-mentality: it is a hopeful rather than a conventional "happy ending." Equally notable are the boxed "Lessons for Life and Storytelling" that precede each chapter. Not only do they serve as links between plot elements, they are also shrewd observations on the potential of language and literature to effect change. As Marjan comments in one of these, "Words are how the powerless can have power."

A young girl, Marjan, rescues the fabled Shahrazad from the Sultan's wrath in this exciting and thought-provoking novel from Fletcher (Flight of the Dragon Kyn, 1993, etc.). With her crippled foot, Marjan never expects to be dragged off to the palace, but that is what happens after a chance meeting with Shahrazadþthe storyteller who wins her life each night with cliffhanging stories for the sultan, and who obtains a story from Marjan. Heartbroken at leaving her Aunt Chava and her Uncle Eli, Marjan confronts cruelty within the palace's lush interior, where wives and concubines can be executed at the sultan's whim, and where the Khatun, the sultan's mother, spies on everyone. Dispatched by Shahrazad to find more stories, Marjan sneaks out into the marketplace, where she eventually finds an old storyteller who tells her the end of a story of which the sultan has become fond. Beaten and imprisoned by the Khatun, Marjan escapes the palace, only to return and tell the sultan an allegory that enables him to realize his love for Shahrazad, and to spare her life. Despite the licenses Fletcher takes with the story of Shahrazad, the novel may entice readers into the pages of Richard Burton's far richer work; they will appreciate the power of storytellingþthat it may expand the soul of even the most hardened listener. (Fiction. 12-14)