Merida from the movie ‘Brave’ has always been one of my favorite princesses. Mostly because at the time in my life when I watched the movie, I was at a ruff patch with my mother, same as Merida. We would argue all the time, until we found a way to ‘mend our bond’, just like Merida did with her mother in the movie.
11 years later I found out that a decade after the movie, there had been a sequel in the form of a novel called Bravely. I absolutely LOVE novels and since Merida is one of my favorite princesses, I just had to buy the book and come along for the adventures that followed.
What is Bravely about?
Bravely (by Maggie Steifvater) takes place four years after the ending of the original movie Brave. Merida is back home after a year of traveling, and gets into quite a bit of trouble with some Scottish gods. To keep her home and kingdom from crumbling by the hands of them, Merida must inspire change in her family, and decides to take a few road trips around Scotland to help them. These trips serve a double purpose, as Merida’s kingdom is threatened by ‘the Dasachtach’ , a war-hungry man who’s not afraid of destroying a few kingdoms who refuse to obey his demands.
Now that you’re all caught up, here’s my review:
The Character Development
The character development in this book is outstanding! Steifvater polished Merida’s character. In the movie, Merida is the protagonist, but the novel goes in depth with Merida, and we get to see her thought-process and learn more about her.
And who could forget about Hamish, Hubert, and Harris!? They are Merida’s brothers that honestly weren’t given much development in the movie, but in the book they are given likes and dislikes, fears and aspirations, hobbies and… oh I could go on! My favorite character is Harris, who is a very thoughtful and quiet boy who I found funny and very intriguing. The boys are a little older and so fleshed out you wouldn’t know they were triplets unless you watched the movie.
The Message
The message of the book is loud and clear. Change is a necessary part of life. This is a message I haven’t seen in many other stories and is given a magical twist in this novel.
Despite the wonderful characters and great message, this book isn’t golden. There were some things I didn’t like about it.
The New Editions take some getting used to
I’ll be honest, when they first introduced Merida’s best friend, castle maid (and honorary sister) Leezie, I didn’t like her. She felt like an ingredient rushed into an already mixed cake. She did nothing to make me like her. Later in the book I understood her a little bit, but some other characters feel just tossed into the mix with little introduction and you just feel a little like ‘wait, what’s going on!? And where is (such and such) from the movie!? Which brings me to my next point:
The Exclusion of memorable characters
Maudie, the old castle maid, was a recurring character in the movie. I think she was given like, a sentence about what happened to her in the book. And with Leezie just slipped into her place, I thought they were the same person!
Angus, Merida’s trusty steed, was also gone! It was stated that he was now a retired horse, but in the movie he was such a loveable and detailed character I immediately missed him! Don’t dismiss Angus like that! I thought Merida and Angus had a bond, but in the book they didn’t even interact.
Romance had no chemistry
Merida does end up falling in love with someone in this story, and while I won’t spoil who it is, I will say this: it lacks chemistry in my opinion. The whole book, nothing showed them developing feelings for each other, or even growing to like each other more than friends. I couldn’t easily believe that they liked each other in this book and wished there were cute scenes of them or maybe moments where Merida was questioning or thinking about how she felt about him.
In my opinion, this book was a great read with very detailed characters, and had a wonderful theme. For someone looking to see just what happened to family Dunbroch after Brave, this is a great book for you.
My latest novel, Shook, is being published to Hive in parts! See all released chapters in this post.
Hey there! I’m Shila! I’ve loved books since I could read, and decided I would write books I wanted to see written for others! Check my children’s book Imagination on Amazon!
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Picture of the Ebook is from the Google Play Books app. Movie picture from imdb.