I bought this book on recommendation for my graphic novel education. When I was a kid I was obsessed with fairy tales, my guilty secret is that I tried to weasel my way in to folklore "major's only" classes in college. (never worked :( ) This is very folkloric in it's storytelling, and the drawings are charming."Castle Waiting" is presented in a beautiful edition and it's lovely to hold and look at, I am pleased to add it to my collection. The stories were very sweet and I loved reading about th...

A magical tale of what happens after the happily-ever-after.To save a young princess's life, a town is put to sleep for one hundred years. When the princess is awoken by a kiss, she wastes no time hurrying off to live with her charming prince, leaving the villagers, well, speechless...The castle soon becomes a refuge for all sorts of "lost souls," both human and animal. We meet a host of wonderful characters, and magnificent tales are spun. A convent full of bearded ladies and a green baby add t...

This is an amazing fantasy graphic novel. It features anthropomorphic animals, an order of bearded nuns, a pregnant lady seeking sanctuary, and mischievous little sprites.Medley does a great job of combining fairy tales with something a lot weirder and more sarcastic. However, this is no dark exploration of the seedy underbelly of our beloved stories. Instead, this volume has an overall happy, upbeat, positive message - true love triumphs, good wins over evil, slaves are freed, and virtue is rew...

[This is a review for both Fantagraphics volumes.]One of the great, nearly insurmountable problems of genre literature is that it has a need to follow after the conventions of its genre. This can be fine if all one wants is more of what one has already read. More hard-boiled detectives down on their luck who come up against the jealous or crooked police force in order to solve the case but ultimately lose the fight. More unsuspecting lads who flee their home villages to get caught up in a prophe...

I’m not sure how to describe this book! Other than to say that I fell head-over-heels in love with the crazy, quirky, and yet comforting world in this one-of-a-kind story. The book opens with a sassy but pretty standard version of Sleeping Beauty, which left me going “Meh. If the rest of the book is just fairy tale retellings, I’m not that interested.” But then it starts a whole new story, still set in a Grimm-type fairy tale land and time but otherwise very different, which got weirder and yet

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)Like any self-respecting obsessive book nerd, at any given moment I'm actually in the process of reading three or four books simultaneously; there is the deeper and more complex novel, for example, that I will read only at a cafe during the day, a less complex one I read in more distracting environmen...

Aww! This was a sweet re-imagining of fairy tale settings and tropes with a decidedly feminist slant, in which everything ends happily but without the darkness or chance of real fairy tales. In the first half of the book, a pregnant Lady goes on a quest for the fabled "Castle Waiting," a safe haven for all who seek it. She finds it and essentially lives happily ever after with her baby, who takes after his (literally) ogreish father rather than the Lady's husband. The second half of the story fo...

Fans of Fables (the comic book) and fables (the genre) alike will enjoy this wonderful comic book compilation of fairy tale-like stories. In fact, even though I'm an enthusiastic fan of Fables, I'd have to actually rank this one as even better, in my estimation. The characters leap off of the page with their charm and fascinating stories. And the author, while alluding to fairy tales frequently, tells her own new stories with magnificent talent!The book ends abruptly, and I sincerely hope that m...

It's like comfort food in comic book form.Cons: certain themes (the romani, the Middle Eastern people being saved by Christianity), the art (very clean - a bit too clean), the animal characters (I'm not sure how they work in-universe), the meandering story line (the main character got lost into a stream of side-characters halfway through).Pros: certain themes (overcoming difficulties by sticking together), the art (very consistent, the style fits the fairy tale theme pretty well), the animal cha...

I'm not quite sure how to rate Castle Waiting. On one hand the presentation and art inside are excellent. The premise sounds interesting and it kept my attention for the first third or so of it. But after that it was just like.... nothing was happening at all. Just a bunch of strange occurrences and introductions to more strange characters. I wanted to know what had happened with the pregnant lady and how she got there but it wasn't really explained. And when I flipped through to the end to see

I L-O-V-E-D this book. I think I might have to read it again right now (something I haven't done since being the youngest of younglings). Had I the money, I would buy a 100 copies of this book to give to friends, and yes, even to throw at enemies - because it might hurt them, tome that it is, but then again, it might also do them some good if they picked it up and read it. I really don't have any enemies but if I did, that's what I'd do. Just letting y'all know. Oh in the best of books, you see

This graphic novel which, in vaguely Chaucer-like structure, tells stories set in a fairy tale world and thick with feminist sensibilities, is clever and engaging, but painfully disjointed, with odd, often disappoint emphasis and an ending that isn't really an ending. I enjoyed Linda Medley's characters and some of her concepts, but I think that practice will give her a better sense of what her readers what in the denouement of a novel - namely, a conflict and resolution for her protaganist rath...

One of my favorite books ever

"Castle Waiting is a marvelous comic in how it has wide appeal. The black and white line-drawing is pleasing and expressive. There is a great deal of humor and the bizarre. The stories, both over arcing and small, are interesting. The most novice reader of tales will be entertained and intrigued. The veteran tale reader will enjoy the scavenger hunt as Medley honors traditional storylines and figures even as she uses them at will—up-cycling, repurposing. Castle Waiting isn’t just feminist, its a...

I really enjoyed parts of this. But the part near the beginning — about how gypsies steal and/or buy babies — really?! It kind of ruined this for me. I saw a big pile of remaindered copies of this at a Half Price books and remembered how someone (but not who) had gushed about the setup in my hearing. (Sleeping Beauty is awakened, then rides off into the sunset with the prince, leaving the other denizens of the castle saying "What?") But the "gypsies steal babies" thing kind of ruined it for me.T...

"Castle Waiting" tells the story of the inhabitants of Sleeping Beauty's castle, after she has been woken and long ago left. An isolated castle surrounded by the ruin of a town and a high briar hedge, it is a place which has become a sanctuary.This thick volume is divided into three main portions. A swift retelling of Sleeping Beauty's tale. The arrival of Jain, fleeing her brutal husband so she can bear another man's baby (the baby entertainingly resembles Shrek). Then the story of Peaceful, a

Hands down one of my favorite graphic novels I have ever read. It is witty, smart and wonderful with a great fantasy story underneath. Linda Medley needs to be on more best-of lists for this great bit of writing and graphics.

Fairy tales and fantasy are not my usual genre, but with the feminine (or feminist if you prefer) touch of the author and illustrator Linda Medley, Castle Waiting is a fresh tale that surprised me and grabbed my attention, even though I didn't believe a word of it.

I just! it's so kind and comforting!one warning: unfortunately (I assume due to being from 1996) it uses the slur word for the Romani people--not AS a slur, but as their name. The characters themselves have two different presentations, one highly negative and one positive. original review:I picked this up on a whim at the library. There were people in wimples and looked like a fairytale retelling! It looked whimsical, and I do love whimsy. I read it mostly in one go late evening/early morning an...

After 10 chapters, there is still no sign of a plot. I give up.Nice art and interesting characters, though.