Summary:
In this short e-book, Hilda the Wicked Witch finds herself in an unfamiliar world where broomsticks are all sorts of colors and people drink something called coffee. She’s not quite sure how she got there, but she knows this just isn’t home. Here she was in the middle of making a poison apple and then all of a sudden she finds herself in a grimy alley way amidst a crowd of tough leather-clad bikers.
Hilda goes on a quest to find her way home and make some sense of this world that is unfamiliar to her. She confronts a biker gang, but no sweat, she’s got her magic wand and her necklace of power. When she loses her necklace that is when she feels that things might turn our horribly for her. She also tries coffee for the first time and she really likes it.
Hilda is a funny character. I find it interesting and intriguing that Kater has chosen to plop a fairy tale character down in the middle of the real-world, or something like the real-world anyways. The items and customs Kater chooses to make odd to Hilda are comical. She is in turn comical to the people of the real-world.
What I liked: I liked the concept. I always find these “what-if-you-put-a-fairy-tale-person-in-the-real-world” stories very interesting. I especially like the movie Enchanted. The Shrek movie series is like that to an extent as well. Fairy-tale characters are placed in real-life scenarios, well close to real-life anyways. Shrek has an outhouse, he farts in the mud, he gets married, raises kids and changes their diapers. That is real-world stuff for you, although, I don’t know how common farting in the mud is. When does a person ever have a chance to do that? I guess if you go to one of those spas where you can have a mud bath then that would be your chance. So if farting in the mud is ever something you want to do, remember that the next time you get a mud bath at the spa. Anyways, back to the story, I guess.
Now that my little rant is over, I really liked Hilda, she was comical and she was likable. She wasn’t this deep brooding character, because there just weren’t enough words to develop her. She wasn’t complicated, but she was still likable. I also like the homage to books and fairy tales in general in the e-book. I am a fan of both, so I like that the story is centered around that.
What I didn’t like: I did not like the language in this book. Kater chose to smatter this tale with explicatives. There were f-words everywhere. So don’t mistakenly download this on your kindle to read to your kids unless you want to increase their cursing vocabulary.
I would have liked it if Hilda had been more developed. I really think there could have been potential to develop this story more. Hilda could have had a much harder time trying to get home. She could have stayed for more than a day. She could have had something that was bugging her about the world she is from that is conflicting to her. She could have had some enemies. She could have developed a love interest. She could have unwittingly appeared on a game show. There are so many things that could have been added to this book to make Hilda’s real-world adventure something spectacular. The story as it is, is not bad, but I really could see Hilda having a more in-depth journey.
One-Eleven Books2 