Ever read a Russian fairytale? Happily ever after isn't what they're about.

Enchantment is a new take on the Sleeping Beauty legend, and yes, it takes place in the Ukraine. Sometimes the Ukraine (not called that yet, of course) is of 1000 years ago, sometimes it is modern day Ukraine.

As a boy, Ivan finds a strange clearing in the forest and catches just a glimpse of what appears to be a beautiful woman sleeping beneath the leaves. He is frightened off by something coming at him from under the leaves. Shortly thereafter, his family leaves for America.

As a graduate student studying the proto-Slavonic languages, Ivan returns to the Ukraine after the Soviet Union collapses. He returns to the clearing because he has been haunted by the memory of what he saw. Again he sees the woman and again something charges toward him. But now he is a runner, and he finds that the thing under the leaves is in a circular pit around the sleeping woman. He runs in circles and is followed by what turns out to be a huge bear. Eventually he tires the bear, jumps the chasm to land near the woman. He kisses her awake.

The bear is approaching, and in a language Ivan just barely understand, she tells him to ask her to marry him. He does, the bear is gone and a bridge appears.

But they don't cross that bridge. Instead, the princess, Katerina, takes him across the bridge she sees, as she cannot see the one he does. This takes them into her time, 1000 years before. Ivan's clothes, however, fail to come along, to his embarassment.

This causes only the first of a series of culture shocks. He asks for her hoose and she is horrified that a man could think of wearing woman's clothing merely because he is naked. It is far worse, in her mind, for a man to wear woman's clothing than it is for him to go naked. 

He is welcomed as her betrothed, but his unfamiliarity with the culture causes tremendous problems.

It turns out that Katerina was put under a spell by Baba Yaga, a witch who desires to rule her kingdom of Taina. If she does not marry Ivan and produce a son, Baba Yaga will be able to justify conquering the little kingdom. But Ivan is already engaged in his time and not in love with the beautiful and hostile Katerina. 

Despite Ivan's reluctance, they finally do marry, but a plot on Ivan's life is uncovered. The newlyweds flee to Ivan's time, where Katerina suffers much the same confusion as Ivan had in her world, especially as her clothing does not come with her over Ivan's bridge. However, one of the old gods of her kingdom turns out to have been masquerading as Ivan's cousin and is able to help her.

The story continues, but I think that is enough detail for a review. I have a definite fondness for retellings of fairytales, and this one is quite interesting. Not a nice, smooth happily ever after kind of fairytale, but a more mature version of a great story.

I will add that for those of you with a passing familiarity with Russian folklore, the origin of Baba Yaga's house on chicken legs is quite ingenious.