Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher. Tor Books, 2023

Shades of fractured fairy tales! Kingfisher has taken the tale of the sleeping maiden in the tower, surrounded by brambles and briar roses, and humanized – albeit by using a not entirely human protagonist.

When a baby is born to the ruler of a tiny backwater kingdom, a fairy steps in. Within minutes of the birth, when the baby is left unattended while the servants looked after the queen, a switch is made. A fairy is left to be raised as a princess, while the human baby is given to some fairies that live in the brackish waters of the lake to raise. They give her some magical abilities, including the ability to transform into a toad, hence her name: Toadling. And, unexpectedly, they, the lowest of the low fairies, love her. She grows up feeling secure and safe.

The princess is a beautiful child, and much is forgiven her. But she drives her family and most of the servants to suicide. Finally, Toadling is called on to use her magic on the princess, and is supposed to recite a spell over the child. But nervous Toadling screws it up, and the child becomes monsterous. It’s sort of a “you had one job…” situations.

Then a curious knight appears. Halim is not your average knight; he’s educated and does not like blood shed. Thus begins an odd relationship between the supposed evil enchantress and the savior knight, and things don’t go as fairy tale readers expect.

I loved Toadling and Halim. Halim is not the average fairy tale knight; he’s curious and has read history, and he just wants to know what’s going on, and make things right, if possible. He treats Toadling with respect and courtesy, and she responds with trust. The climax was rather unexpected. What happened seemed out of character for the two, but it did not seem totally out of line for the story itself; the world of the story is a little grim and this fits right into that. This is a novella, so it comes in at only a little over 100 pages, and reads fast, too; it could easily be done in one afternoon. Four and a half stars.

Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline: Dieselpunk & Decopunk Fairy Tales, Anthology edited by Rhonda Parrish. World Weaver Press, 2019

The time of “Dieselpunk’ and “Decopunk” runs from the start of WW 1 to the end of WW 2. Like Steampunk, they refer to an alternate world history, one in which the mechanics of the world are futuristic- ray guns, robots (sometimes sentient ones), rockets, and, sometimes, magic. Some of the tales I think I’d call noir punk. This collection takes fairy tales and sets them in this D-punk world, mostly with good effect. Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio. Rapunzel, the Little Mermaid, and more. I was happy to see many female heroes, and pretty good queer representation. All the authors were new to me, but there were NO duds in this anthology- which I find unusual; most times, I don’t like half the stories in an anthology. Five stars!

Harry’s Trees, by Jon Cohen. Mira, 2018

Harry has always loved trees and found them a comforting presence, so he went to work with the Forest Service. Then he found himself stuck behind a desk for years, putting information into a computer and never seeing the outdoors. When his beloved wife dies in a horrible accident, it upends his entire world. He leaves his home and job, and finds himself in the Endless Mountains in Pennsylvania. This is where he runs into Amanda and Oriana.

Amanda is a young widow, a nurse scrambling to make ends meet and deal with her daughter’s grief and insistence that her father will return from the dead. In the Endless Mountains forest, her father had built her an amazing tree house, weather tight and good sized, the kind of tree house that we all dreamed about as kids. Amanda decides to allow Harry to stay in the tree house for a while, as he sorts himself out, and helps Oriana sort herself out. They end up on an amazing adventure with a mysterious fairy tale book, an invincible librarian, sacks of gold, and multiple enemies to defeat.

It’s a brilliant story, a fairy tale on a modern scale, where the trees are as important as the people, where a little girl with a red coat is the bravest, and where the Wolf talks to the dog. The writing made me feel like the world was illuminated with golden light despite the people who were greedy. I was so sad when the book ended; not because it ends sadly but because I had to walk away from that world. Five stars. 

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What Should Be Wild, by Julia Fine. HarperCollins, 2018

Little Maisie Cothay was born from her mother’s dead body. Right away (thankfully) her father discovered that the touch of her bare skin would kill- or resurrect. It could even happen repeatedly- she killed her father several times before reaching toddlerhood. She could even resurrect the long dead, which necessitated coating all the bare wood floors and trims in the house she grew up in with several coats of varnish, and making sure she only wore synthetic fiber clothing. She grew up in her mother’s decrepit Blakely family mansion in a large forest, with only her anthropologist father (who seems to see her as a long running experiment) and the housekeeper for company. Her father educated her and she read everything in the large library- being careful to wear gloves, of course. But one day the housekeeper dies, she accidently runs into the housekeeper’s nephew, and her father disappears. This is when she decides she must go on a quest to find her father.

She’s not the first girl of her mother’s family to go into the forest, which was forbidden to her. Through the years, many have gone in and not returned.  Maisie also finds herself going into the city and meeting new people for the first time. It’s a very abrupt and sudden coming of age as she explores both areas, and finds that evil can wear an attractive face.

The story is a fantasy, coming of age, fairy tale. Unlike in most fairy tales, the girl is the hero, not the princess in distress. There is a sleeping beauty, but she isn’t waiting for a prince to kiss her. It’s well written, and I liked the back stories of the Blakely women in the woods. I enjoyed the book, but I can only give it four stars; there were some problems with pacing, and something lacking in the Blakely women in the woods.     

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The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror, by Mallory Ortberg. Holt, 2018

This is a collection of retold fairy tales. Some of the stories are some of the better of this genre, in the vein of Angela Carter. Others left me just puzzled. The author lists her influences in the back of the book, which I liked because I wasn’t sure about some of them. She didn’t just work from the brothers Grimm; she also has Biblical influences, Shakespeare, the Wind in the Willows, and even does a riff on the Velveteen Rabbit (which I thought was a really creepy tale).

These are not pretty tales; they are all on the dark side. The ‘Wind in the Willows’ one, “Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Mr. Toad” is about as dark as you can get, seeing how far people can go in the name of ‘helping’ others. One really different aspect to these stories is how Ortberg puts a spin on gender and terminology; princesses can be male or female, as can wives and husbands or sons and daughters. I liked the idea of ‘wife’ being a job description rather than a term fixed by one’s genitals! The author also has a wicked sense of humor that comes out at times. Four stars. 

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Magic for Unlucky Girls, by A.A. Balaskovits. SFWP, 2017

This is a book of 14 mostly reimagined fairy tales- not Disney fairy tales, but grimmer than the brothers Grimm. Think Angela Carter’s “Bloody Chamber” or Emma Donahue’s “Kissing the Witch”. These stories are feminist in a way; they explore the horrible ways in which women and girls are suppressed and abused, but they don’t always offer hope. Girls turn on other girls in one and feed off the bodies of others in another. In “Eden”, the one person with kindness in his heart is ripped apart by the women of the town.

These aren’t pretty stories at all. Most are moving, though, and there is a beauty to the prose even as it describes horrible things. It turned out to be not my cup of tea, but I think it’s very good. Four stars. 

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The Poison Diaries, by Jane, Duchess of Northumberland Illustrated by Colin Stimpson. Abrams, 2007

‘The Poison Diaries’ is a book for children- and adults. The story is short- an abusive apothecary takes on a young boy named Weed as an assistant and puts him in charge of the poison garden- but it works as a fairy tale, has a moral, and is an emotional story. It’s the illustrations that are so marvelous, along with information on the poisonous plants that’s included. As Weed tends the poison garden, the plants take turns speaking to him, telling him their tales and their medicinal and toxic uses- and their hatred of the apothecary. It’s a dark tale, and the illustrations are dark, too- even the brightest pages have a pale gray wash on them.

Some reviewers have said that they didn’t think this would be a good book for children, but I know I would have loved this book when I was in elementary school, and I know a lot of others who would feel that way. It’s in the same vein as many of the tales in the various books of fairy tales; they get pretty bloody and grim and kids love them. 

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