Ugh, now you’ve done it. You ate too much.
And yet, there’s still room for chocolate, caramel, marzipan, cookies, cake, candied almonds, or peppermints. Seriously, when was the last time you turned down something gooey and frosted because you were “full”? As in the new novel “The Kingdom of Sweets” by Erika Johansen, some things are beyond tempting.
Anastasia, the cook, knew it. Everyone, it seemed, knew that Natasha Stahlbaum was in love with Conrad, the son of a minor aristocrat. They all knew it, just as they knew that Conrad would never love Natasha because she was cursed.
She was not born that way. No, Natasha and her twin, Clara, were born just after midnight on Christmas Eve, and everyone proclaimed how lucky it was. But when Drosselmeyer, who was said to be a magician, was named as the girls’ godfather, he arrived at the christening, looked at the babes in their cribs and said two words.
“Light,” he’d uttered to Clara, who then floated through life, beloved, charming, and beautiful with long golden curls framing a sweet face. Clara danced the ballet, and collected dolls and boyfriends
“Dark,” he’d whispered to Natasha, pragmatic, plain, bookish Natasha, a careful, no nonsense observer who desperately loved Conrad, but who would never have him and everyone knew it. Natasha, who would be betrayed by her sister on the eve of their seventeenth birthday, in a most devastating way.
The twins’ parents had arranged the betrayal. Conrad’s parents approved it. Drosselmeyer had paid for it. And to seal the deal, he brought gifts to his goddaughters: a nutcracker for Clara and a clown doll for Natasha. And then he told Natasha that she wouldn’t suffer for long.
As the embers of the Christmas Eve fire cooled in the hearth, Natasha heard her clown doll’s evil giggles and she began to think, hard, about the strength of. Drosselmeyer’s magic. With swirling shadows surrounding her, she picked up Clara’s nutcracker – a toy she’d been warned to avoid – and she stepped into a land of candy…
Snowflakes and presents and twinkly lights: those are just some of your Favorite Things. Get “The Kingdom of Sweets,” and you’ll want to add that, too.
With a shivery nod to Tchaikovsky, The Brothers Grimm, and Stephen King, author Erika Johansen beckons readers to join her in a picturesque late-nineteenth-century European village filled with Christmas, shadows, and magic but, of course, nothing is as it seems. Indeed, from the outset, the very presence of Drosselmeyer – who shows up on the first page of this story – should make you uneasy. He’s no benevolent godfather, and he gets worse. For awhile.
But then again – Natasha isn’t all sugarplums, either. Johansen makes her a very sympathetic character but, well, you’re going to have to read the book now, aren’t you?
Just know that it’s a gift best left unwrapped, unless you love tales of darkness and magic, or you want to be scared positively witless. Start “The Kingdom of Sweets” because you can never read too much.
