The Moonspinners

Rating:
Summary: Not so Spunky Girl Heroine?
Review: Any time you pick up a book by Mary Stewart you are guaranteed a well written and well researched story with interesting characters and stunning settings. Moonspinners is set in Greece, and you do feel as though you are almost there with the main characters of the story. Nicola Ferris is a secretary at the British Embassy in Athens and she takes off for some R & R on Crete, little knowing that her vacation will bring adventure and danger and of course romance. My only quibble with this book, as well as with other Mary Stewart romance/mysteries is that the heroine tends to depend on her male friend a little too often and also gets rather weepy on occasion. The fact that almost all the characters smoke contantly also dates the story a bit. But all in all its a good book and the perfect companion for holiday reading.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite book ever!
Review: I read this book because Meg Cabot picked it as her book of the month for her online book club, and I had just finished Nine Coaches Waiting, which I enjoyed. So I ordered a copy of The Moonspinners and began reading--and immediately found it impossible to put this book down! Mary Stewart is a wonderful storyteller, and this is one of her best. Nicola is believable, rather than switching into superhero mode at the first sign of danger, and Mark...well, I have to confess I have a bit of a crush on him. The movie with Hayley Mills doesn't do justice to this absolutely wonderful novel. So what are you waiting for? Grab a copy and start reading!

Rating:
Summary: Best of the best
Review: I, too, was amazed to discover how different the book was from the screen adaptation. As much as I enjoyed the movie, the novel is on another level entirely. After reading it, I would suggest that the movie should bear the sub-title "Roughly suggested by Mary Stewart's novel of the same name".

Nicola may have her moments of weakness, but unlike many other Stewart heroines who seem to go around in a bit of a fog to keep the suspense level higher, she does the best she can mentally with the information at her disposal. Her actions and reactions were uniformly true to her established character, and her courage was both admirable and somehow believeable.

The suspense builds steadily right up to the end with no let-down, and unless your satisfaction depends on a heroine who also qualifies as a kind of samauri-warrior, I don't think you'll be disappointed in Nicola's personal involvement in the climactic sequence. (Compare her end-role with that of the heroine in Ms. Stewart's next novel "This Rough Magic" - which bears a striking similarity to "The Moonspinners" - and I think you'll see what I mean.)

Personally, I rate the mystery and suspense books I read on a scale from one to ten, and "The Moonspinners" is one of only three that has gotten a 10 from me.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite Mary Stewart novel
Review: While the Disney film 'The Moon-Spinners' starring Hayley Mills is a fab movie, it doesn't do this book justice. If you're a viewer of the film and think you know the plot: think again. The plot and characters are *much* different than the film version; enough that I think of film and book as two entirely different entities.

I currently have three copies of this book on my shelf: one from ebay, one that I ordered from the UK when it was only there I could find it in print, and the most recent US printing. It's a book that I've read many times and hate to see end each time.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite Mary Stewart novel
Review: While the Disney film 'The Moon-Spinners' starring Hayley Mills is a fab movie, it doesn't do this book justice. If you're a viewer of the film and think you know the plot: think again. The plot and characters are *much* different than the film version; enough that I think of film and book as two entirely different entities.

I currently have three copies of this book on my shelf: one from ebay, one that I ordered from the UK when it was only there I could find it in print, and the most recent US printing. It's a book that I've read many times and hate to see end each time.

Rating:
Summary: Let the Legend of the Moon-Spinners Bind You!
Review: Who can resist the spell that Mary Stewart weaves in one of her best novels?
Not a soul.
Technically, 'The Moonspinners' has all the right ingredients, beginning with a fantastically deceptive setting--the untamed Cretan countryside, described to perfection with its whirling white-sailed windmills, its craggy landscape peppered with enough fragrant wildflowers to fill Dioscorides' Greek Herbal and its people, proud, fiercely patriotic, bravely bearing the scars of war and the miseries of a sparse existence.

The protagonists are charmingly intrepid, managing to keep their British stiff upper lips intact even in the face of a wildly unstable group of gun-happy thugs-turned kidnappers. Our narrator is a deliciously innocent, well-meaning and attractive vacationer, Nicola Ferris, (think Elizabeth Shue in 'The Saint' not perky Hayley Mills who in the movie of the same name was a burgeoning adolescent--this Nicola is a consummate situation-manager on a mission, accustomed to controlling her life and the people around her)who in refusing to back out of an affair she unwittingly steps into, discovers the one situation she cannot manage without help. It takes the handsome stranger, in the guise of competent English tourist Mark Langley (and yes, a young Peter McEnery will do quite,) to turn the tables on her while pressing her into a less dominant role that she finds she actually likes. Mark's teenaged brother, the kidnapped Colin and his clever forays into the stranger world of British slang, provides an effective comedic foil for the straight-laced Mark and his Greek counterpart, the English-idiom-challenged caique-owner, Lambis. The insiduous-pallikarathes villan, Stratos, one part charm to two parts unstable lethal weapon, the slithering eel-like Tony, and sadly-complaisant, hard-working Sofia, round up the players along with Nicola's older but wiser cousin, Frances.
Don't miss this one--the prose alone will have you chucking your stalward life and buying a Greek wildflower guide along with a one-way ticket to Crete just to stand in the presence of those languidly spinning windmills!