“A Long Long Sleep” by Anna Sheehan is a wonderful read. If you had the chance, would you sleep for 62 years and never age? For the average person that lives to the age of 90, you spend 30 years of your life sleeping. Rosalinda Fitzroy or “Rose” is put into a stasis tube. In this futuristic world, stasis tubes put you in a dreamlike state and completely stop your aging process. Imagine being a kid for more than a century. Rose awakes from her stasis tube when a boy named Brendan stumbles upon her. Rose finds herself in a peaceful world that has been through “The Dark Times”. Rose emerges the heir to a company that her parents had left behind when they died in a helicopter crash. This company controls most of the world in many different markets.

With no one that truly understands her, Rose turns to her art. She goes to school with Brendan and starts to fall for him. She also finds a friend in an alien named Otto. He was genetically manufactured by Rose’s company so he basically belongs to her. He cannot speak but he can communicate through thought when he touches her skin. Rose is lost in this new world. She learns that The Dark Times were a horrible time of famine and plague that was partly caused by her parents. Rose still mourns for her dead parents and her lost love, Xavier. As she tries to get used to a new life, a problem arises. A robot assassin is after Rose, and he’s prepared to kill her.

Rose is an interesting character to explore. She seems of average if slightly lower intelligence; her art is her high point. She paints and draws everyone she meets. Her art is her saving grace. Brendan is the popular funny guy that is friends with practically everyone. He accepts people for who they are, not what they look like. Otto is an alien but more like a boy than anything else and a good friend of Brendan’s. He reads Rose’s thoughts but he is scared of her mind. There are deep gaps in Rose’s memory and dark places in her mind that he is afraid of.

This book was an interesting sci fi twist on a classic fairy tale. It gives a good reference to the classic sleeping beauty fairy tale, but i’d say its more interesting. Rose’s prince charming doesn’t turn out to be who she thought it would be, but there is a knight who fights through the thorns that surround her heart. More than waking up from a sleep, Rose is awakening to the truth. This is much more than a story of love. It’s a story of survival and a journey to find who she is.

4/5 Stars