THE SPINNER AND THE SLIPPER, Camryn Lockhart

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!

GRENDEL, John Gardner

Greetings, Anglo-Saxon poetry fans and postmodern monster lovers alike. That’s a combination of readers I didn’t expect to come across in my fantasy excavations. Sure, there are plenty of contemporary fantasy works featuring monsters from gothic literature—e.g. vampires and werewolves—and folklore—e.g. fairies, witches and werewolves again (?)—that give the monsters a sympathetic perspective. Heck, more and more we get revamped fairy tales that turn classic villains into heroes or anti-heroes. So, what makes John Gardner’s Grendel stand out?

Let’s start with the fact that you probably know Grendel’s original source, the epic poem Beowulf, from one of three sources: your high school literature class, the 2007 3D-animated film with Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mostly naked lizard mother, or the Wishbone book adaptation Be A Wolf! (Okay, maybe that last one only applies to me.) The point is that Grendel is the monster that the titular hero of Beowulf faces and defeats with pure strength and will. He serves mainly as a superhuman threat to King Hrothgar and the Danes, prompting Beowulf to show up for some old-fashioned monster slaying. Typical mythic story. Yet, to be fair, even in the original poem, the lines of good and evil are not so clearly defined.

A throwaway reference is made that Grendel may be a descendant of Cain, the murderous son of Adam and Eve who offed his brother Abel out of envy for God’s favor. This allusion paints Grendel as something inherently diabolic beyond his ghastly attacks on the king’s hall. His actions result in many a dead man, thus Beowulf’s efforts to kill Grendel seem doubly noble. That said, during the mano-a-mano fight, the poem portrays Beowulf as a monstrous creature, too, perhaps akin to Grendel.

The similarities drawn between Grendel and Beowulf could be enough to write a reversed-perspective story that explores them, and I did expect a stronger focus on Beowulf in Gardner’s novel. Instead, much of the novel centers purely on Grendel’s existential angst, and not in a bad way. Just a mind-tripping one.

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN, Ransom Riggs

Yay, I managed to meet my “probably in April” deadline! For a review that’s seven months past relevance (when the film adaptation hit theaters). Actually, no. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will have relevance well after people have forgotten the Tim Burton version, banished to the same memory cupboard as Dark Shadows and Alice Through the Looking Glass. The novel itself is five years older than its film counterpart, but thanks to its two sequels, there’s more meat to eventually dive into. So, where does this grand adventure populated by remarkable and somewhat frightening children begin?

Florida.

Well, if you need to start in a non-magical place full of its own peculiarities, might as well be Florida.

In truth, Ransom Riggs’ opening falls in line with the impulse of many fantasy writers setting up ordinary heroes before entering the extraordinary world. That is, his version of Florida is, for the most part, benignly mundane. Sort of a shame. I mean, where are all the alligators? Instead, we get right to Jake Portman, the teenage protagonist. He’s going about a typical day at a job he doesn’t want, living with a family that doesn’t appreciate or understand him. A familiar beginning, but let’s proceed.

A COURT OF MIST AND FURY, Sarah J. Maas

You think Maas is going to go through the whole color spectrum? First ACOTAR in red, then ACOMAF in blue—maybe green next time? Or yellow? Or purple? Ooh, if she’s going with the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model, then I’m predicting purple. Hegelian dialectic, bitches!

What the heck am I talking about? Just how A Court of Mist and Fury basically flips so many things from A Court of Thorns and Roses 180 degrees! Some fans of the first book will like it; others will hate it with all the passion that only shippers can feel. My disclaimer for this review may put off Tamlin/Feyre lovers (do they have an official name? Tumblr, enlighten me!), but I must be honest: I liked Feyre and Tamlin in as much that he made her happy, or at least could be romantic with her to a nauseating degree. He brought light and love into her life—so it’s a shame their relationship takes a bleak turn that only worsens over the course of the book, for various reasons.

RED: THE TRUE STORY OF RED RIDING HOOD, Liesl Shurtliff

I’m starting to realize that I’ve read and reviewed a fair number of fantasy books inspired by the Little Red Riding Hood story, and more are on the way. So either this cape-wearing girl is just really popular, or my repertoire is too narrow, and what little readership I have will soon be sick to death of her. In my defense, two of those stories were about the same Red Riding Hood from Once Upon A Time, just as this Red is the same character featured in Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin. For both girls, the second book is their true debut as protagonists, so technically I’ve only reviewed two Red Riding Hood stories, right? (Not for long—be on the lookout for Sisters Red.)

In my further defense, I had to give Red a try after enjoying Rump so much, even if part of that enjoyment came from my attachment to the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale—and a certain TV show’s rendition of its titular character. But Shurtliff’s smart and fun writing styles played no small part, so Red deserves as much consideration. 

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE, Neil Gaiman

Some readers may tend to steer clear of first-person narration, especially with child narrators. In response to that, I say that if you want to see a writer do first-person well, read Neil Gaiman’s work. Specially The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Part of what makes the narration effective—both in first-person and with a kid—is that it captures the atmosphere of childhood in all its mythical, treacherous glory. There’s also some temporal distance at play, even if it’s not always apparent.

The voice itself belongs to a middle-aged man reflecting on a series of memories from childhood he’d lost. No, it’s not a soap opera-worthy case of amnesia. These foggy recollections are triggered when he visits the Hempstock farm after a funeral (never told whose funeral—there’s a lot of names we don’t know, actually). He doesn’t even realize how much he’s forgotten until, while staring into a duck pond that his friend Lettie Hempstock called “the ocean,” he’s mentally brought back to his seven-year-old self.

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL: A WORLD WITHOUT PRINCES, Soman Chainani

Ah, yes, the first in what will probably be a continual string of sequels in several fantasy series I may half-regret starting somewhere down the road. Sequels are generally a tricky business, especially since they’re almost always part of a trilogy, tetralogy or so on. First books have the benefit of introducing a world and its characters while not being obligated to explain everything. The second installment has to both expand on the setup in a meaningful way and not be a thinly veined rehash of its predecessor. Then again, many second installments are revered as the best part of a series because they can dare to push the heroes to their limits and close on a dark ending. A World Without Princes delivers a blend of all of the above, sometimes to its own detriment.

The story continues closely from where the first book left off: Agatha and Sophie are back in their village, now made famous by their fairy tale. For the few months, Sophie basks in the fame while Agatha just wants everything to be normal again. When their fame dies down, Sophie grows restless for attention while being overshadowed by changes in her family life—her father is getting married to her dead mother’s best friend, who Sophie suspects her father had an affair with even while Sophie’s mother was alive. Agatha tries to comfort Sophie and be content with their Happily Ever After. Too bad she can’t make herself forget Tedros, the prince she started falling for back at the School for Good and Evil. As the rising tension suggests (along with the book’s title), events propel the girls from their village back to the school—only this time their exit is triggered by one of them.

TRUTHWITCH, Susan Dennard

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Aether. Void—wait, what?

Sorry, guys, this isn’t exactly a Harry-Potter-meets-Avatar-the-Last-Airbender kind of world. But it’s not that far off. Truthwitch is the first in a series that takes place in a fantasy world called the Witchlands, where people can be born with a witchery (no, not Witcher), or a special power connected to some element of the world or human nature. Sounds like a gripping world, right? Almost like the setting for a tabletop or video game RPG. Much like an RPG resembling D&D or Skyrim, this is a complex world ruled by several kingdoms, with hundreds of years of politics influencing the characters as they pursue their own goals. The only problem: Dennard doesn’t tell us much about it.

MAGNUS CHASE AND THE GODS OF ASGARD: THE SWORD OF SUMMER, Rick Riordan

Is it just me, or does it seem like Norse mythology got really popular all of a sudden? Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is getting a miniseries (which in all fairness has only a couple Norse deities, no spoilers), Marvel is making its third Thor-centric film, and now Rick Riordan is throwing angsty teens at the mercy of Norns, Valkyries, dwarves and giants, not to mention the gods themselves. Now, this isn’t Riordan’s first mythology rodeo, as anyone who loves the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series can tell you. In fact, the Greek and Norse pantheons aren’t the only divine playgrounds he’s visited in his books. But what of the stories themselves? Is each new hero basically Percy Jackson with a different coat of paint? It may seem so with newcomer Magnus Chase, but the clever reimagining of the worlds of Yggdrasil and the characters joining Magnus in this adventure offer much to enjoy.

UPROOTED, Naomi Novik

If you’re looking for a book that brings together the best elements of Sarah J. Maas and Patricia Briggs in style and story, and the intensity of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Harry Potter heptalogy, you need look no further than Uprooted. Does that sound overblown? Hey, if it gets you to read this book, my work here is done.

Okay, okay, not exactly done, calm down.

Anyone planning to pick up Uprooted should have a fair idea of what to expect. When you read its summary, you might get a Beauty-and-the-Beast vibe, what with the arrangement between a humble village and a powerful figure called The Dragon, who ensures the villagers’ survival in exchange for one local girl every ten years. You wouldn’t be wrong to notice the similarity, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

TOO MANY CURSES, A. Lee Martinez

What do you do when you throw together a kobold, a sadistic wizard and packrat, and a castle full of enchanted creatures and objects who just want to get back to their normal lives, and not get mauled, petrified, or consumed by a door that must never be opened? When you put it like that, it sounds like a Harry Potter spinoff, but even Hogwarts was never this unruly. Instead of a boy wizard, our intrepid hero is a foxy-looking kobold named Nessy who just wants to get through her chores without the castle falling into utter madness, especially after her master, Margle the Horrendous, is accidentally murdered. Such is the romp Too Many Curses.

This fantasy screwball comedy brings out all the wildness of its premise. But Curses isn’t exactly a laugh-out-loud riot. Much of the humor relies on dry wit and quirky characters, not clear-cut punch lines. It will get a chuckle out of you, but don’t be too disappointed if you’re not rofl-ing. Now and then you can feel the humor push a bit beyond its reach and trip over itself. Thankfully those moments pass quickly and are easily forgiven. Maybe it’s the type of humor that hits its mark best when someone is actually delivering it. In other words, I really would like to see a film adaptation of this book and how comic minds would perform these scenes. But there’s more than humor working in this book’s favor.

THE LEGEND OF DRIZZT: HOMELAND, R.A. Salvatore

Wow, a fantasy book that isn’t Young Adult? It’s a little unsettling, actually, that so many entries in the fantasy genre (and this blog) are geared to a younger audience. Perhaps not that surprising, since literary works are considered more “adult” and “serious”, but even sci-fi gets to explore adult themes more widely. Aside from Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings, much of fantasy falls under YA or romance. I’m hoping that novel series like Forgotten Realms will keep cropping up and drawing in older readers in search of stories both insightful and entertaining.

The appeal of these Dungeons and Dragons books, like its tabletop origins, is that people across the age spectrum with a love for fantasy can appreciate and enjoy them. That’s certainly the case with Salvatore’s The Legend of Drizzt series, or at least his first chronological installment, Homeland. There’s good-old action and lore to excite the action junkie and lore nerd, but he also teases out some social commentary about oppressive societies that use fear and propaganda to control its population, and how suffocating it is to live in them, unable to escape. While the world of the drow (dark elves) in Menzoberranzan bears witness to obviously questionable morality, it can make us reflect on those aspects in our own culture an outsider might find objectively horrifying but we accept on a daily basis.

THE SLEEPER AND THE SPINDLE, Neil Gaiman

I almost feel as though this should be considered a Short Review since The Sleeper and the Spindle pretty much qualifies as a short story in length. With its illustrations, it comes out to just under 70 pages. And honestly, it’s a concise, beautifully rendered story that doesn’t need much said, and shouldn’t have too much said to avoid spoilers, so forgive the brevity of this review.

As one should come to expect from Gaiman’s approach to rehashed fairy tales, the stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty weave together in both a new and familiar way, and with such seamless ease you’d think other writers would have tried to bring them together sooner. The opening action follows three of the seven dwarves visiting the cusp of Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom to procure fine cloth for Snow White’s upcoming wedding. Right away we glimpse at the devotion the dwarves have for her (if only these three—keeping the number of dwarves low is an understandable alteration for the sake of effective characterization) as well as understand where we are in Snow White’s story. 

THE HOB’S BARGAIN, Patricia Briggs

As a (new) reviewer, I can occasionally—ha, yeah, occasionally—hit a brick wall when it comes to writing on a book I’ve enjoyed. Why? A good question I don’t quite have the answer for. It probably comes down to being reluctant to deconstruct the weaknesses as well as the strengths of a work when you have less tangible reasons for liking it. How does The Hob’s Bargain stand apart from other fantasy books? How is it similar? Is the devil in the details rather than the, let’s face it, tried and true formulas of stories in general? Finding the answers is a large part of why I started reviewing fantasy books.

As a fan of both Rumpelstiltskin- and Beauty and the Beast-inspired stories, the back cover of Hob’s Bargain promised a mix of both. Aren, our hero, is a peasant woman with the power of foresight, though it’s a fickle power she doesn’t have much control over. Only when the raw magic of the world is released, previously bound by human mages, does she begin to understand her gift. But with this self-discovery come the dangers of untamed magic resurrecting supernatural creatures of myth, including the Hob, a powerful being who is known for its deals. To better understand her magic and guarantee the safety of her village, which is filled with people who distrust her now that they know about her magic, Aren strikes a bargain with the Hob. 

TIGER LILY, Jodi Lynn Anderson

When it comes to adapting Barrie’s story of a fantastic land where children never grow up, the aspect that just about everyone stumbles on is the portrayal of his Native American characters, who even in the original story suffer from the influences of colonialism and racism. Jodi Anderson attempts to not only tackle a new vision of Neverland’s native residents but put them in the spotlight as a culture and a collage of diverse characters. That doesn’t spare her from some deserved criticism of the stereotypes and caricatures she employs, as better dissected by Debbie Reese in her review of the book. Forgive my willingness to leave the problematic elements to the scrutiny of critics with a better grasp of the prevailing racial issues in Western literature that Tiger Lily reflects. I’ve honestly struggled to post this review out of fear that I wasn’t giving the Native American portrayals their due analysis, as my own knowledge on the subject is limited. For anyone interested, you can read Reese’s article here, and I recommend you do. I’ll mostly stick to assessing the story elements on the whole.

THE LOOKING GLASS WARS, Frank Beddor

Between this and Tiger Lily, you’d think the latter would’ve given me more trouble while I worked out how to address its flawed approach to racism and queer identity while also praising how it brought Barrie’s characters and world to life in a new way. Well, it came to a 50-50 split over which book gave me the splitting headache of these last four months. Where Tiger Lily and The Looking Glass Wars differ lies in how I can’t contribute much social criticism to the first (as you will see next week), while I have plenty of story-based issues with the second.

This blog reviews various works of fantasy, but my specialized interest is in reworked popular stories that, over a century later, still enthrall us. Sometimes I’m rewarded with works like Tiger Lily; while it’s not free of problems, it successfully respects and perpetuates the spirit of the original. Then we have The Looking Glass Wars. Oh, boy, do we ever. We have it so much that it’s prompted my longest review to date. I pray for my readers’ perseverance (if I have any readers at this point).

Let’s start with one of my biggest adaptation pet-peeves.

OUT OF THE PAST, Kalinda Vazquez & Corinna Bechko

Remember how, back in December, I was going to post a review of Once Upon A Time: Out of the Past as a follow-up to Shadow of the Queen? Yeah . . .

The long and the short of it, there’s a lot of material to cover in this book, and that’s a good thing. Out of the Past distinguishes itself from Shadow of the Queen and has learned a few important lessons. Telling four stories instead of one over the course of 88 pages demands tighter structure and perhaps simpler self-contained ideas. I think the book benefits on the whole. We get to see more characters following their own arcs, spared attempts to entwine them all into one plot that would only stretch them thin. They also each nail a personal, crucial aspect of each character’s development. Shadow of the Queen had a similar goal, but magical shenanigans distracted it from that purpose.

That said, this collection has its share of strengths and weaknesses, and they need to their fair share of consideration. Much as I tried, I couldn’t do the whole book justice in one review. So I’m breaking up Out of the Past into four “short reviews” for your reading pleasure. You can go directly to those reviews here: Dead in the Water (Captain Hook), Truth and Daggers (Rumplestiltskin & Belle), Ghosts (Evil Queen), Tea Party in March (Mad Hatter).

Short Review: DEAD IN THE WATER

Out of the Past opens with Once’s Captain Hook out at sea on the Jolly Roger. Except he’s not Captain Hook yet—this is his time as a pirate before meeting Milah, and before he lost his hand to Rumplestiltskin. The narrative setup neatly fills the 22-page length while trying to unearth some new or interesting elements of the character. Does it succeed? Eh, kind of.

The Jolly Roger is fighting through a storm to get to the Southern Isles (yes, that’s a Frozen reference), and things keep getting worse until Killian spies some calm waters, the only hope for survival. The problem is that said waters are the Leviathan Shoals, a dangerous area haunted by a monster capable of casting illusions to lure prey into its clutches. Despite the warnings of his first mate, Killian sees no alternative and orders the crew to steer the ship to the shoals. Shortly after they escape the storm, he spots a small ship nearby—and who should be on board but his deceased brother, Liam, alive and well.

Short Review: TRUTH AND DAGGERS

For me, this was the most frustrating story to read and review, partly thanks to my bias. It centers on Belle and Rumplestiltskin, my favorite characters on Once Upon A Time. More than that, the story attempts to explore the pair’s relationship while living in the Dark Castle, as well as Belle’s individual past. And it fails so much. What should’ve been a golden nugget of canon expansion, especially for the often neglected Belle, turns out to be fool’s gold.

The beginning has plenty of promise. We see a bit of Belle’s daily routine as she sets out to do some grocery shopping for Rumple’s larder. Rumple is his usual self—snarky, distrustful, and obstinate in hiding his affection for his maid under the previous two traits. Belle engages in teasing banter with him before setting off with a charmed broached that alerts Rumple if she tries to run away. At this point, Belle seems to like Rumple and wants him to trust her. Keep this in mind, as it because a somewhat baffling plot point later.

Short Review: GHOSTS

It’s another Evil Queen story, only this time wholly focused on Regina. The art and tone, not to mention the title, evoke a haunted atmosphere that intensifies when, while traveling through the Forest of the Dead, Regina is injured in her crashed carriage and sees what she takes to be the ghost of her dead first love, Daniel. But the story doesn’t cross into the supernatural—just amazing coincidence.

The apparition is in fact a man, but not Daniel. It’s his brother William (not previously introduced in the show), and he lures Regina into a trap so as to avenge his brother’s death. As informed readers will know, Regina’s mother Cora murdered Daniel, so his death was not her fault; rather it sparked her own quest of vengeance on Snow White. To find out that a living relation of Daniel’s blames her for his demise is a surprising turn for her and the reader.