May Fairy-Tale Roundup

Time for another set of flash reviews!  It was a good month for reading.  Are there any stories you're particularly looking forward to this summer?

A. G. Marshall – The Grandmother With Enormous Eyes.  This short story is Little Red Riding Hood with a twist… and I can’t say anything else without spoiling it.  Fun!

K. M. Shea – The Goose Girl (Entwined Tales 1).  What if the swap between the princess and the lady’s maid was the princess’ idea?  Can even the king’s spymaster figure out what’s going on before somebody starts a war?  This was such an original twist on the fairy tale.  I loved poor long-suffering Rynn, who gets stuck masquerading as a princess, and whose situation is made even worse by her awful fairy godfather and by the evil plans of an ambassador.  Recommended.

 

Melanie Cellier – A Tale of Beauty and the Beast.  This is the sequel to A Dance of Silver and Shadow, which I reviewed here.  Chosen in a violent Princess Tourney, Sophie is forced to travel to desolate Palinar, where a beastly prince lives in a castle with intangible servants.  He’s so rude he won’t even speak to her… but is his situation and his kingdom’s really his fault?  And when an unpleasant acquaintance turns up with a plan to save Palinar, will she agree to marry him in order to bring the invisible people of Palinar back into the real world?  This was a good retelling, with enough new material to make it feel fresh, funny secondary characters, and a solid if predictable romance.  Recommended.

George MacDonald – At the Back of the North Wind.  An old favorite of mine.  A little coachman’s son named Diamond meets the powerful North Wind and travels with her to many places.  But my favorite parts of the story happen when Diamond is safe at home.  He is a Little Lord Fauntleroy sort of character—a thoughtful and kind child.  As a bonus, Diamond’s friend tells him the tale of the cursed Princess Daylight, which MacDonald also published separately as a short story.  Highly recommended.

 

Melanie Cellier – The Princess Game.  Fourth story in the Four Kingdoms series of linked retellings (see previous reviews here and here).  I liked this one more than Fugitive and Pact although not as much as Companion.  Princess Celeste has a bizarre curse: she has to act stupid in front of anyone who might recognize her.  (But as long as no one knows who she is, she can be her masterfully intelligent self, which has allowed her to create and run a spy network in her home kingdom without any other members of the royal family noticing.)  When the newly arrived Prince William starts hanging around her both when she’s displaying her foolish public self and when she’s her sneaky spymaster self, Celeste is going to have a hard time concentrating on the rebellion that’s brewing in Lanover.  I like the basic idea of this story—it definitely wasn’t what I expected from a Sleeping Beauty retelling—and it has a lot of adventure and solid character development.  Celeste’s intended arc isn’t necessarily compelling… she ultimately lets go of her anger because it turns out that the object of her anger is a victim too… but she also has an (unintended?) growth in her appreciation and trust for others.  Recommended.

Brittany Fichter – Beauty Beheld – Book 3 in a series (see previous reviews here and here).  What if Hansel and Gretel weren’t really the woodcutter’s children?  What if a malicious half-Fae opened a door into the Kingdom and starting luring children away with the smell of cookies?  Ever and Isa return to try to fix their Kingdom’s problems even as they struggle with their own childlessness.  This book was fine.  As in the previous ones, the writing is a little rough in places and the morals are a bit too in-your-face, but otherwise this is an enjoyable read.

 

Aya Ling – The Ugly Stepsister.  Leaving her sister watching SpongeBob in the living room, seventeen-year-old Kat goes upstairs to clean out the attic.  But when she accidentally rips up a magical Cinderella book she is sent into the story—as one of the ugly stepsisters.  If she doesn’t guarantee a happy ending, she’ll never be able to go home.  But (Cinder) Elle isn’t interested in the right guy… the fairy godmother is nowhere to be found… and the prince is maybe interested in Kat, whose modern sensibilities make her stand out.  (She gets involved in the labor rights movement, child labor laws, etc.)

I enjoyed this book; Kat’s commentary on Victorian society is frequently hilarious.  I’ll probably try another of Ling's books sometime.  But there were some things that annoyed me.  First is a pretty big plot hole.  WHERE is this place that Kat is sent to reenact the story?  According to the goblin Krev and Kat’s own assumptions, the story world is just that—an imaginary place that only exists within the bounds of the Cinderella story, and only comes alive when Kat is sent there because the book had been destroyed.  But Kat walks into a fully realized world with, y’know, problems of poverty and labor and backstory for the main characters which does not match the Cinderella story that the book supposedly contained.  Krev the goblin also suggests at one point that this is another dimension.  So… is it real or not?  And as a linked question… is her marriage to X real or not?  If yes, he definitely has room to complain.  If no, why did she marry him?  The answer seems to be no, since after she wakes up from her “dream,” she immediately acquires a real world boyfriend… so that YA readers won’t feel cheated because the previous romance wasn’t real?  Um.

Please note:  I assumed this was a Christian retelling when I started it, but there’s nothing in the book itself to indicate this—though it is fairly clean.