Dokey, Cameron. The storyteller's daughter.

Simon & Schuster, Simon Pulse. 221p. c2002. 0-7434-2220-1. $5.99. JS

Bucking the trend of retelling fairy tales in order to empower formerly passive heroines, Dokey's retelling of The Thousand and One Nights enlivens a heroine who is active and clever in legend. In fact, Dokey's Shahrazad is merely wise and loving, while the Shahrazad of legend is a studious, well read intellectual. In this retelling, 17-year-old Shahrazad is the daughter of Maju the Storyteller, the greatest living storyteller, who has been prophesied to bear the greatest storyteller of all time.

As Shahrazad's tale opens, it mostly follows the familiar legend, tidied up: of a scene which in one version of the legend is extremely raunchy, Dokey's narrator says, "it is not seemly for me to tell." Shahrayar the king, betrayed by his wife, declares that he will marry a maiden once a month, and kill each new bride the following morning. Shahrazad knows she is up to the challenge, and forces her father, the king's vizier, to provide her as the first bride. As in the legend, Shahrazad stays alive night after night by telling an unending tale to her sister Dinarzad--and to her fascinated bridegroom. But in this retelling, Shahrazad finds herself heartbroken at having to deceive her beloved husband as to her true motives. A treasonous plot embroils the lovers, but their real enemy is the misunderstanding and fear that keeps them from admitting to true love. Shahrazad's nightly stories provide backdrop and depth to the love story.

Fittingly, Shahrazad's story is told in stylized language, as if it were a storyteller's spoken tale. Though the pseudo-oral style leads to occasional awkward or florid moments, it also begets some truly lovely passages. Deborah Kaplan, Arlington, MA