[I received an electronic review copy from Netgalley and Tachyon Publications in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary
A collection of 28 fractured fairy tales as well as notes and poems from the author. Some of the material also ties back to the author’s other works. Reading this gave me the same feelings I felt when reading Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling. You might not know the origins of all the stories, but there is a tone and cadence to them that feels familiar anyway.
Review
It’s difficult to summarize a collection of short stories, at least for me. I find that I enjoy some of the stories and others don’t click. It’s rare for me to love everything in a collection like this. My favorite fairy tales in this collection are:
Snow in Summer – A twist on Snow White with a satisfying ending I really enjoyed.
One Ox, Two, Ox, Three Ox and the Dragon King – A story of three brothers on a quest to save their mother.
Slipping Sideways Through Eternity – A time travel story that shifts from modern times to the Holocaust.
Sleeping Ugly – A Sleeping Beauty-esque story starring a beautiful princess with an ugly personality.
I love fractured fairy tales in general and have enjoyed many books in that style. This was an interesting collection of them, although many weren’t my style. This could be a great resource for writers, writing students and writing classrooms as well as for poetry work. I wish the collection had been arranged so the notes and poems were with their fairy tale counterpart rather than having the fairy tales at the front of the book and all the notes at the back. I also found that I enjoyed this more when I read only a couple fairy tales at a time and then let the stories sit in my mind for awhile rather than trying to read through the whole book as you would a novel.