Anna Sheehan's novel retells the Sleeping Beauty fairytale in a futuristic setting. Rosalinda Fitzroy wakes up after 62 years in "stass sleep" (a suspended animation chamber) to find herself sole heir to her parents' empire, a freak in the eyes of her schoolmates and contemporaries, and pursued by an unstoppable robot killing machine to boot. She's missed out on an awful lot during her years of slumber, including "The Dark Times" (a global apocalypse) and the life and times of her original childhood sweetheart Xavier. There's also big questions to be asked about why Rosalinda was ever in stass to begin with... and dark secrets to be revealed from her own past and her parents'.
A Long, Long Sleep is certainly a page turner. It rattles along at a fair old pace with strong characters and plenty of twists. I suspect I'm not the book's target audience, it's probably aimed at younger female readers BUT it's a hell of a lot better written than the Twilight books and though the internalised teen romance seemed a little twee at times (to a cynical old grouch like me), for the most part I was hooked. There's no edge to it, which I'd have preferred, but neither is there a great deal of the sci-fi gobbledygook that spoils many a futuristic thriller. Immensely readable, give it a go if it sounds like your kind of jazz.
