Brace yourself, dearies: it’s a fusion retelling!
Rumpelstiltskin meets Cinderella! Yes, I’m about to review a fairytale
re-imagining involving a favorite fairy tale of mine. In reviews like these, sometimes
I find myself on the brink of maniacal laughter. Why? Because my readers are no
doubt sick of seeing yet another book
review focused on Rumpelstiltskin. And I’m too villainous to stop. Cue evil
laughter.
Maybe I wouldn’t make a credible villain, but at least I’d
be a memorable one, unlike those in Camryn Lockhart’s The Spinner and the Slipper. If you think I’m referring to
Rumpelstiltskin, the titular Spinner, you’d be quite mistaken. Now, I enjoy a
non-villainous Rumpel portrayal as much as—well, more than most people—but I also like my Rumpel intriguing, complex,
and sympathetic as well as flawed. This Rumpel is … a little too tame for my taste. Given his role
in this Rumpelstiltskin/Cinderella crossover, it’s understandable why he comes
our more “hero” than “trickster.” As for Cinderella, well, better start from
the top. There’s a lot more to cover with her.
We open with a parent death scene. Ah, a classic fairy tale
trope that will never die. How ironic. Said death is centered on the mother of
this story’s Cinderella. Eliana, our soon-to-be-orphaned heroine, is only a
child at this point, but she understands that her kind mother is breathing her
last, and she desperately hopes for a miracle to save her. Instead, as a
parting gift, her mother bequeaths a necklace and ring that seem to be made of
gold. She explains that while these will be precious tokens of her love, Eliana
must be willing to give them up when asked. Why? Uhhhh … no time to explain. Must
die now!
That’s not the end of it, though. Off in the wings—or in the
nearby woods—a hidden male figure inner- monologues about Eliana’s mother, who
he somehow knows. We even get a hint later, as Eliana grows up, that some
presence is watching her. Okay. Not creepy at all. He’s protecting her, right?
As it turns out, our Rumpelstiltskin stand-in can only
occasionally watch over Eliana in person or through a crystal ball. A crystal
ball that resides in the fairy realm, kept in the private quarters of the fairy
king Oberon. Oh, no, another crossover! Except, wait, this Rumpelstiltskin is
not called Rumpelstiltskin. He’s “the captain of the guard.” Huh? Why is the
character based on a fairytale archetype known for nothing but magical spinning
given the job of commanding King Oberon’s troops? And somehow he’s good at
spinning straw in gold and turning
water into glass. Does he teach other fairies how to do this? Or is this
something most fairies can do? The book never clarifies.
All right, let’s leave Rumpel (or not—we’re not given any
name for him) for now to give a proper assessment of Eliana. Whereas the
former’s traits are confusing, Eliana’s character and situation actually make
sense and are an interesting blend of the two fairytales. Eliana is both
Cinderella and the miller’s daughter. Yes, this does weirdly make sense. Most
versions have Cinderella as a nobleman’s daughter who is brought low by her stepmother
and stepsisters. Here, before her father remarries, Eliana already does a fair
amount of labor around the home as regular chores. She and her father have to
work for their living, even though they do pretty well for members of the
peasant class. So when her father brings home his new, upper-class wife, then
dies, Eliana’s willingness to serve her new family isn’t as great a shock to
her system. She’s not being broken in spirit or made weak.
That said, some people might find Eliana’s subjection to
servitude in her own household less tragic because she’s already used to manual
labor. It may lessen the stakes of her winning freedom from her abusive
relations. Lockhart does compensate by having Eliana lose important things,
like her own room to her stepsisters and her ring and necklace to her
stepmother. However, the latter is a temporary loss since the moment Eliana,
per her mother’s request, freely gives her jewelry to her stepmother when
asked, the stepmother realizes that the ring and necklace are just clay painted
as gold and throws them back in Eliana’s face. Eliana is surprised but doesn’t
give much thought to this revelation since the jewelry’s true value comes from love
for her dead mother. Overall, Eliana is kind and intelligent enough that we
sympathize with the injustice of her situation.
The problems come later for her in the same way they do for
the miller’s daughter in “Rumpelstiltskin.” For the most part, Eliana has
little agency over her situation once her stepmother, in a moment of desperate
foolishness, tells her rich friends that Eliana can spin straw into gold. Word
gets to the king, and, soon, Eliana is unwillingly carted off to the king’s
castle and a room where she must spin the straw or die. Thus arrives, at last,
our Rumpel. Against the orders of his king (keep up—there are two jerk kings in this story), the
nameless captain-by-day, spinner-by-night helps Eliana. While he does ask for
the ring and necklace, it’s clear his intentions are pure. Furthermore (spoilers)
he doesn’t even ask for a firstborn. No, no, that wouldn’t do for our true-blue
fairy hero. Instead, on the third night that Eliana needs him to spin straw
into gold, she learns that he doesn’t have a name—
Wait, wait, wait. A version of Rumpelstiltskin where he
doesn’t have a name at all? It’s as ironic as you can get, but doesn’t that cut
out the big point of tension in the original story? Also, logistically, how could
this guy have gone through his presumably long life without a name? What does
everyone call him? Oberon and Titania (yup, she’s in this, too) call him
‘Captain,’ but what did people call him before he became captain of the guard?
‘Spinner’? ‘You there’? Someone ought to have given him any nickname just so they wouldn’t drive themselves crazy getting
his attention. Hell, Lockhart could’ve done something fun and had
“Rumpelstiltskin” be a nickname since, like I said, it’d be awkward to go through
life without any appellation. Dick move on his parents’ part! Yet everyone
treats it as though his not having a name isn’t a huge deal.
Oh, but Eliana giving him a name is a very big deal. So big,
in fact, that her naming him basically means they’re married. Is this another
thing the fairies normally do? Do they not have pets? Can they not name their
pets lest they be considered “married” to them? The rule surely doesn’t apply
to parents naming their children, but that means there’s a special rule the fairies
invented in the event that some jerkwads forgot to give their kid a name! Which
must happen way more often than it should!
You can linger on such details for only so long, I suppose,
even if they make you tilt your head ninety degrees. This bizarre setup for
nameless Rumpel ultimately serves to create a super-special-awesome bond
between the romantic leads. I’d have preferred that the two just, you know,
love each other and let that be motivation enough to fight for one another.
Where fairies are concerned, naturally things don’t go
smoothly. Oberon catches on to what the “captain” has been doing and decides
it’s got to stop. Boom! Amnesia for Eliana! The heartbroken nameless is sent
back to the fairy realm for imprisonment while a confused Eliana learns that
she’s been spinning straw into gold and now is about to marry the king’s son.
In a refreshing twist, Eliana has no interest in the prince because, shock of
all shocks, she’s never met him. Lockhart could’ve taken this opportunity to
change the prince into a jerk like his father, but instead he seems like a
decent guy whose heart is otherwise engaged. Neither the prince nor Eliana are
inclined to get together and wed. The king is adamant, however, so Eliana
attends a three-night ball wearing a gown made of the gold she has allegedly spun.
While at the ball, she’s nearly pushed into dancing with the prince, but some
unearthly force spares her with an introduction to a masked stranger who is eerily
familiar.
Yes, to the surprise of very few readers, the nameless fairy
has been rescued with help from Titania. Our three-way crossover ties in a
subplot in which Titania and Oberon constantly undermine each other for shits
and giggles. Puck makes a super-short cameo. Okey-dokey.
If you’re hoping for the expected happy ending, don’t worry.
Some obstacles do interfere with Eliana and her lover up until the end, so
there’s enough tension to keep you engaged until the closing chapter. Is it my
ideal fairytale retelling? It can be a little sappy with the romance. The
characters are so insistently good that they begin to grow dull. You can get
invested because they’re put in awful situations, so that’s a point in the
book’s favor. But again, I personally like my heroes more nuanced, especially
Rumpelstiltskin. When Velde tackled retelling “Rumpelstiltskin,” she tried
multiple versions, all varying in how much of a hero or villain the title
character was. The best heroic Rumpels still had something strange and
interesting about them. This Rumpel is appealing in how much he cares about
Eliana but also wants to be dutiful to a promise he made (that involves
spoilers). Other than these qualities and his status and weird set of powers,
we don’t know anything truly personal about him. There’s little to clue us in
on what shaped him as a character, and he’s not allowed more complexity. Eliana
isn’t complex, either, but we can understand how her upbringing shaped her
personality and made her fight to stay a good person in the face of cruelty. That
is expected fare for a Cinderella-type character, anyway. Lockhart could’ve
better fleshed out the world of the fairies, laid out more of the its rules
regarding how powers work and why anyone can get away without having a name.
It's still a sweet, entertaining story, if a little lacking
in world building and complex characterization. It still cleverly intertwines
two fairytales you might not typically envision together.
Rating: 3.5/5
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