Book of a Thousand Day's - Shannon Hale

 I love Shannon Hale, she is an amazing author. I loved her Goose Girl, Enna Burning, and River Secrets series.  I also loved Princess Academy.  Then of course there was Austenland. Great fun for Jane Austen fans!

My opinion of this book fluctuated as I read it.  I always liked it, but some parts I loved, and some parts were just o.k.. This book got complicated for me at times with all the different "gods" and "ancestors".

I loved the story though.  I loved "Dashti."  How many people in the world to day, make promises and really keep them?  She was a young woman who represented almost all the values that we teach our young women in church.

• Faith - she prayed all the time and believed in her "gods." 
• Divine Nature - This one she did not understand, feeling she was lower than her "Lady" because of being a mucker.
• Individual Worth- even though she didn't see her true potential, she did love who she was and knew she played an important part of society. 
• Knowledge - she was always learning and teaching herself. 
• Choice and Accountability- she understood choices and accountability very well.  Everything she did was done with great consideration. 
• Good Works- Her whole life was spent serving others and thinking of others first. 
• Integrity - She was always concerned with doing what was right and representing herself appropriately, and sometimes those things conflicted with each other. 
• Virtue -  I think she was an example of virtue in every way.  She did what she felt she was born to do.  She served her "Lady" dutifully, even when it meant going against her values, because her value of her oath to serve was so important.  She risked her own life for those she loved, as well as strangers.  She prayed throughout it all.  Prayed for strength, for forgiveness, for enlightenment, and for safety.  Most of those prayers were for her "lady."

I know comparing the values is a little bit of a stretch, but I feel that Dashti is a great character for young girls to read about and try to emulate.  There are not a lot of those type of characters in literature today.