Cassandra Reads

I was a little leery of this book going in, I didn't like Rumpelstiltskin in the last book (not that he's in it for very long, but still).  He doesn't completely redeem himself in this book, although he is explained some.  He first meets Shayera after telling her father (Gerard, from Gerard's Beauty) to kill himself.  There was a deal made and that somehow means that either Gerard gives his daughter to Rumpelstiltskin or Gerard dies.  I still don't understand how that works, since Rumpelstiltskin said the deal was a "single day of fealty to me [Rumpelstiltskin]".  How does that translate to Gerard giving up his daughter or dying?  Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but that doesn't make any sense to me.  

That said, Rumpelstiltskin goes very hot and cold like Hatter did with Alice.  It drove me crazy then, and it's even worse in this book.  If I'd been Shayera I would have just done the tests, been happy when I failed and left.  Failure depends on what Rumpelstiltskin says is failure, but I'm not sure she would have won if he hadn't loved her.  

Parts of this book really reminded me of Beauty and the Beast.  I'm going to assume that was intentional, since Shayera is Gerard's daughter and he loved Belle once.  A curse, a castle with "strange" servants, a prince and only one woman can break the curse.  I hadn't noticed until I was over half done, but that's a lot of similarities! There's also differences, Shayera isn't Belle and Rumpelstiltskin isn't the beast but Shayera does seem to like reading (given that her mother is - or was? -  a librarian, that isn't surprising at all.