Review: Nettle & Bone

Title: Nettle & Bone

Author: T. Kingfisher

Genre: Fairy Tale

Trigger Warnings: Death, child death, grief, domestic abuse, murder, violence, blood, cannibalism (mentions), animal death (mentions), pregnancy, childbirth

Back Cover:

After years of seeing her sisters suffer at the hands of an abusive prince, Marra—the shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter—has finally realized that no one is coming to their rescue. No one, except for Marra herself.

Seeking help from a powerful gravewitch, Marra is offered the tools to kill a prince—if she can complete three impossible tasks. But, as is the way in tales of princes, witches, and daughters, the impossible is only the beginning.

On her quest, Marra is joined by the gravewitch, a reluctant fairy godmother, a strapping former knight, and a chicken possessed by a demon. Together, the five of them intend to be the hand that closes around the throat of the prince and frees Marra’s family and their kingdom from its tyrannous ruler at last.

Review:

I put this on my TBR list for a reason, I assume. However, by the time I actually got around to reading it, I didn’t remember that reason. And as I tend to do with books that are on my TBR list, I didn’t even bother to read the back cover before I started reading. So I really had no idea what to expect going into it. So I was pleasantly surprised with how enjoyable it happened to be and how much it felt like a genuine fairy tale, albeit a darker one.

The story moves very fast and seems shorter than it is. It goes back and forth between past and present, showing Marra’s quest to kill the abusive prince as well as the backstory – her life as a third-born princess and how she decided killing the prince was the way to go in the first place. It was a little confusing at the beginning as it went back and forth. Both storylines were interesting, but the backstory was told out of order so it wasn’t always clear where events fit in the timeline. Once I got oriented a bit better, I managed to fit the outlines of the story together and enjoyed it a lot.

I was somewhat expecting a YA book (I have a tendency to gravitate towards those in general) and all the accompanying tropes. So I was pleased to find that not only is this not YA, Marra turns all of the protagonist tropes on their head. She’s thirty years old. She hates being a princess not because she wants her freedom or anything, but because it’s a lot of pressure and politics and she’d rather knit and embroider at the convent. She’s incredibly innocent and considers herself a coward, but doesn’t recognize exactly how much she is willing to go through to save her sister. And as a final interesting bit, she’s slightly below average in mental faculties and aware of it, which was interesting and unique and in its own way a bit refreshing. She was a fantastically interesting and unique character, and also quite easy to like, if just slightly too bland to adore.

The rest of Marra’s questing party were quite fun. I loved the grouchy, powerful, knowledgeable old woman, and her relentless matter-of-factness was fantastically entertaining. The former knight who was trapped in fairyland for a while and not sure what to do now was okay, but incredibly bland – notable for being muscular and vaguely kind, but not possessing much in the way of personality. The fairy godmother was a later addition to the party, but she was relentlessly cheery and I enjoyed her quite a bit too. The chicken possessed by a demon and the dog made of bones who hasn’t really figured out he’s dead were both fun (mildly amusing and completely adorable, respectively), but were both more like pets than actual characters, no matter what the back cover said.

The plot moves very fast and the book seems a lot shorter than it is. The three “impossible tasks” are over and done with fairly early. It alternates the quest to collect allies and kill the prince who murdered one sister and is abusing the other with Marra’s upbringing as a third princess and in the convent. Despite the past having significantly less plot than the present, I found it just as interesting. All of the story itself was very good. It’s the details where things start to struggle, and most of them I noticed more in retrospect.

The magic was fairy tale-ish but the system was vague, which was fine for the kind of story this is. I really couldn’t get a sense of the world beyond “generic medieval-ish fantasy,” and even with Marra growing up in a convent I only got the vaguest sense of one minor deity-ish being. It was … fine, but I think there could have been more done with it. Also with the demon-possessed chicken – there’s a lot of potential in that idea that never played out. And there’s an interesting theme about trying to force people to receive your help when they don’t want it. It’s a very worthwhile message and an interesting idea to contemplate, but I don’t think Marra ever actually learned the lesson so I’m not sure it really counts as a theme in the first place.

Despite the shortcomings, I very much enjoyed the book. It struggles in the details, but the problems are easy to overlook while reading. Usually when a book has two storylines, I prefer one over the other, but both the past and present stories in this one were enjoyable, which is unusual and deserves major props. I appreciated a protagonist who isn’t whip-smart and is just honestly trying her best. It was a solid plot, good characters in general, a great protagonist, a mostly happy ending, some fun and interesting ideas, and some good emotions. The details may be lacking in retrospect, but it doesn’t affect the reading experience, and on the whole it’s a very good read.

Review: Little Thieves

Title: Little Thieves

Author: Margaret Owen

Genre: Fairy Tale

Trigger Warnings: Body horror, child abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, abandonment, adult/minor relationship, sexual harassment, animal death, vomit, fatphobia (mentions), murder, death, blood

Back Cover:

The little thief steals gold, but the great one steals kingdoms;
And only one goes to the gallows…

Vanja Schmidt knows no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love. Abandoned to Death and Fortune as a child, she has scraped by as a lowly maidservant with her quick wits and the ability to see her god-mothers’ hands at work in the world. But when they demand her lifelong servitude in exchange, Vanja decides that gifts not given freely…can always be stolen.

When an opportunity rises to steal a string of enchanted pearls, Vanja seizes it, transforming herself into Gisele, the princess she’s served for years. As the glamorous princess, Vanja leads a double life, charming the nobility while ransacking their coffers as a jewel thief. Then, one heist away from funding an escape from her god-mothers, Vanja crosses the wrong god, and is cursed to turn into jewels herself. The only way to save herself is to make up for what she’s taken—starting with her first victim, Princess Gisele.

A wicked retelling of “The Goose Girl,” Little Thieves is a delightfully witty YA fantasy about the fickle hands of fate, and changing the cards we’re dealt.

Review:

This seems like a fairly straightforward plot, right? A thief steals the wrong thing, gets cursed, and has to return everything she’s stolen to get un-cursed. It sounds straightforward and doable, if personally difficult for our protagonist.

Except that there are so many complicating factors that this simple-sounding plot becomes a 14-hour audiobook of surprises, magic, unexpected friendships, and one of the most thoroughly evil antagonists I’ve encountered in a long time. The true purposes behind Vanja’s curse aren’t even revealed until the climax. The back cover leaves out the villain entirely, along with two of the three major characters helping Vanja.

There is a lot of plot in this story, but there are also very strong character arcs. Giselle got an obvious one of learning how the other 99% lives and how to not be a spoiled rich girl, and I wasn’t sure if I would like her but she turned out pretty decent in the end. Ragne, the half-human shapeshifter daughter of the goddess who cursed Vanja who is attempting to help Vanja undo her curse, learns how to act like a human and how to fall in love. Emeric, the investigator trying to find the culprit behind Vanja’s jewel thefts, learns to deal with loss and discovers some things about his sexuality.

I saved Vanja for last because, as the main protagonist, she has the most going on character-wise. She has a metric ton of trauma, and her character is one of the best-written descriptions of trauma I’ve ever seen. There’s no “saved by the power of love” or torture porn or anything, she just feels and reacts in a way that had me thinking, “Yeah, that’s just How Trauma Is.” Her path has some steps forward and some steps back (like dealing with trauma in real life), and she gets some stunning character growth as she learns to start trusting people again.

I love that everybody in this book is just allowed to feel things. These characters have suffered a lot of pain, Vanja especially, and there aren’t any easy answers but the story doesn’t try to give them any. There are a lot of big emotions but the book makes space for those and they’re handled with respect and care.

Since so much of the story is not mentioned in the back cover, I’m going to limit my discussion of it. That said, I did thoroughly enjoy it. It’s absolutely full of shenanigans, from delightful jewel heists to playacting as a ditzy princess to get out of trouble to the natural hilariousness that comes from pretending to be both the princess and her maid at the same time. This book doesn’t explore the world much, and in many ways it relies on “generic vaguely-18th-century-Europe fantasy” tropes, but it has a distinct German flavor and an interesting pantheon and religious system that elevated the setting far above pure trope for me.

I’m also going to mention the antagonist, who doesn’t even show up until a quarter of the way through the book but whose threat level rapidly increases as the story goes on. He is the worst, most hateable kind of enemy, the nobleman who sees everyone else as beneath him and those beneath him as less than human, and who thinks his feeling entitled to rule everything is exactly the same as Vanja feeling like she deserves to be treated like a human. He’s an abuser and a sexual predator and so very powerful and I can’t express how much I hate him but from a story perspective he did make a good antagonist.

I’m leaving a ton out of this review just for space considerations, but I could talk about this book for a long time. There’s so much in this book. Not only was it a stellar story, reading it was incredibly cathartic. I got to see some fantastic hijinks, solve a couple magical mysteries, encounter several gods, tell off some self-centered nobles, enjoy some hilarious one-liners, and fight a seemingly-unstoppable antagonist armed with little more than quick thinking and thievery skills, and I also got to wrestle with some complicated feelings about mothers, face lingering trauma, stand up to past abusers, seize control over my own destiny, and start learning to be happy.

If you want a fantasy adventure mystery that will make you laugh, this is your book; if you want a cathartic emotional read that might make you cry, this is also your book. Basically, just read this book.

(Also go to the author’s website and look at the character profiles at the bottom of the page, they are the BEST.)

Review: House of Salt and Sorrows (DNF)

Title: House of Salt and Sorrows

Author: Erin A. Craig

Genre: Fairy Tale/Horror

Trigger Warnings: Death of parent, death of children, grief (severe), injury details (severe), terminal illness (mentions)

Note: Trigger warnings in DNF books only cover the part I read. There may be triggers further in the book that I did not encounter.

Read To: 32%

Back Cover:

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls’ lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last–the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge–and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.

Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that her sister’s deaths were no accidents. The girls have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn’t sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who–or what–are they really dancing with?

When Annaleigh’s involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it’s a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family–before it claims her next.

Review:

I hadn’t actually intended to review this one. I had planned to make it just another book that I wasn’t very into but didn’t have strong enough opinions to write a review about – this book isn’t bad, it just wasn’t grabbing me. But then I realized why I DNF books just when I’m getting to the part where the story should be picking up and getting good, so this is part review and part reflection post about why I stop reading just when the book gets good.

This is a retelling of the fairy tale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” which I only know about because I had a Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses coloring book as a kid. I am absolutely down for retellings of less-known fairy tales, and a horror retelling sounded especially promising.

It didn’t grab me from the beginning, but that happens and I wanted to give it a chance. When the book opens, the fourth sister had just died and the remaining sisters had not yet started sneaking off to dance all night, so I knew eventually they would find their way to sneak away and go dancing with the people the back cover hints may not be human. And I didn’t hate it, so I kept reading.

And then they found their way to sneak off their island home and go dancing. I was reading this at work and at that point I paused the story to go on break, and after break I queued up a different book and started reading something else. When I actually took a moment to think about it I wasn’t exactly sure why. It wasn’t stunningly fascinating, but I didn’t hate it, and I’d stopped right when it was promising to get into the meat of the story. And it’s not the first time I’ve stopped reading a book right when it should have been getting good (see here and here, for example). But with this book, I’ve finally figured out why I do that.

This is not a horrible book, and there’s nothing egregious to make me hate it. I just didn’t find the plot, characters, or what-have-you particularly compelling. But the back cover had promised me a Major Incident where something dramatic would happen to propel the story into more interesting dimensions. Without even consciously making the decision to do so, I kept reading despite being ambivalent about the book because I had the anticipation of the Major Incident. Once the Major Incident happened, though, the anticipation compelling me to read on was gone and I realized I was ambivalent about the book and had no desire to keep reading, even though I was at the point where it should be getting good.

This isn’t a bad book. I didn’t hate it, it just didn’t grab me, and I’m sure there are people out there who will like it better. It did help me figure out why I tend to stop reading books just when they’re “getting good,” though, so it was worth the read just for that.

Review: Spinning Silver

Title: Spinning Silver

Author: Naomi Novik

Genre: Fairy Tale

Trigger Warnings: Physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, spousal abuse/intimate partner violence, alcoholism, violence, body horror (severe), kidnapping, forced marriage, death, death of children, death of parent, antisemitism, poverty, possession, mind control

Back Cover:

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty–until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold.

When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk–grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh–Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. Set an impossible challenge by the nameless king, Miryem unwittingly spins a web that draws in a peasant girl, Wanda, and the unhappy daughter of a local lord who plots to wed his child to the dashing young tsar.

But Tsar Mirnatius is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and her two unlikely allies embark on a desperate quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power, and love.

Channeling the vibrant heart of myth and fairy tale, Spinning Silver weaves a multilayered, magical tapestry that readers will want to return to again and again.

Review:

I did not have very high hopes for this book. I picked it up because I like fairy tale-inspired fantasy and this looked like an interesting mash-up between the Snow Queen and Rumpelstiltskin. But it also is an 18-hour audiobook and I have a fairly short attention span, so a book has to be really good to make me willing to spend 18 hours with it.

Spinning Silver absolutely delivered. I loved this story.

To start with, the back cover makes it sound like Miryem is the only main character and her two “unlikely allies” are supporting characters in her story. That is incorrect. Miryem has her own story, true, but Wanda and Irina (the lord’s daughter) have their own stories too, intertwined but completely distinct. (I think Irina and Miryem meet once, maybe twice, and I don’t recall Irina and Wanda ever meeting.) Not only did Naomi Novik give me a fantastic fairy tale, she gave me three fantastic fairy tales spun together in one book.

Each of the three heroines are their own distinct person to root for. Miryem is the granddaughter of a very successful moneylender and the daughter of a very unsuccessful one – her father is a wonderfully kind and compassionate man, but he’s too kind to collect from the people who owe him so his family lives in poverty and disgrace. Miryem stomps down her compassion to collect the debts, and becomes so good at moneylending that she brags she can “turn silver into gold” and attracts the attention of the Staryk king. And not only is she Jewish, her being Jewish is what saves the day towards the end.

Irina is a lord’s daughter, but she is too plain to be married off to anyone of consequence – until her father develops a plan to use Staryk magic to marry her to the tsar. The tsar is not what he seems and brings another dangerous player into the story. Irina is up to the task of surviving this new threat, though, and is not only strong and brave but also concerned for the safety and interests of her people. All of the characters are compelling in their own right, but Irina is by far the most kind-hearted.

Wanda is a peasant farmer’s daughter who ends up working for Miryem’s family to pay off her father’s debt. Her mother is dead and her father is drunk and severely abusive, and all she wants is to have enough money to get away from him. Her story is less about magic and fae than the other two protagonists’ and much more human, but just as compelling – and in some ways more relatable, because fae kings and eternal winter aren’t a common situation but abusive families sure are.

The setting and the plot are so intertwined that you can’t really talk about one without the other. It has a clear Eastern European feel (Naomi says on her website that the book is based on Polish folklore) and a definite 17th-century-peasant-village vibe without romantacizing the harshness of that life. Miryem and Irina are, through their own separate circumstances and methods, working to prevent the Staryk from creating perpetual winter. Wanda is assisting where she can, quiet but strong and brave. (This description makes her sound less interesting than the other two but I promise she is not.) And above all, all three women are just trying to survive.

There is so much more in this book than what I can put into a review (again, 18-hour audiobook, nearly 500 pages in print). But it’s all so worth it. I recall at least two times I thought the plot must be wrapping up soon and then got hit with another new twist, new bit of information, new change in the dynamic that made the magic continue. I can’t even mention why the tsar is not what he seems without giving away a major spoiler. This book is dense and lyrical, fantastic and relatable, a story of supernatural forces considering humans beneath their notice and humans standing up and taking back their power. The folktale roots come through clearly, and it has a very strong folktale/fairy tale feel even in the writing style. I thoroughly, unreservedly adored it.

Review: Girl, Serpent, Thorn

Title: Girl, Serpent, Thorn

Author: Melissa Bashardoust

Genre: Fantasy/Fairy Tale

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, violence, kidnapping, confinement/imprisonment, emotional abuse, body horror

Back Cover:

There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it’s not just a story.

As the day of her twin brother’s wedding approaches, Soraya must decide if she’s willing to step outside of the shadows for the first time. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds knowledge that she craves, the answer to her freedom. And above is a young man who isn’t afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison.

Soraya thought she knew her place in the world, but when her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, she begins to question who she is and who she is becoming…human or demon. Princess or monster.

Review:

I finished this book five days ago and am just now starting the review, which is an unusually long delay for me. But I’m having a really hard time figuring out what to say about this book. It’s really, really good – set in a world based on ancient Persia, featuring a cursed princess and fascinating demons and just enough magic to be tantilizing without giving it a high fantasy feel. It was highly engaging and I enjoyed every minute of it.

What makes it hard to write a review is that the plot on the back cover wraps up about 40% into the book. It’s a rare book that can put the major twist in before the halfway point and still make the story interesting, but this book pulls it off. And also makes it hard to review, because anything I say about the last 60% is going to be a spoiler.

This is one of those books you could easily analyze for a paper for school or discuss in a literature class. It has Important Themes of family loyalty (what do you owe your family if everything they’ve done has made your life worse?) and humanity versus monsterhood, centering around a cursed princess who believes her poisonous touch makes her more monster than human. But if you don’t feel like digging that deep into it, you don’t have to. In a surface read, it’s a perfectly entertaining fantasy story with likeable characters and surprising twists.

Since it’s so hard to talk about the story contained in this book without ruining the experience, I guess I’ll just say this: Experience it for yourself. It’s a great fairy tale, marvelously told, set in a richly imagined world of Persian royalty and demons who haunt the woods, resplendent with myths and monsters and unexpected surprises and featuring a protagonist who is as loveable as she is relatable. It’s a very, very good book and needs to be experienced to understand just how good it is.

Review: Dragons at Crumbling Castle, and Other Tales

Title: Dragons at Crumbling Castle, and Other Tales

Author: Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fairy Tale

Trigger Warnings: Mild cartoonish violence

Back Cover:

This never-before-published collection of fourteen funny and inventive tales by acclaimed author Sir Terry Pratchett features a memorable cast of inept wizards, sensible heroes, and unusually adventuresome tortoises. These accessible and mischievous tales are an ideal introduction for young readers to this beloved author. Established fans of Pratchett’s work will savor the playful presentation of the themes and ideas that inform his best-selling novels.

Review:

These are very much stories for children. All of them are incredibly short and straightforward, full of Pratchettly witicisms but devoid of complexity. (I have decided that Pratchettly/Pratchetty is a word now, meaning something amusingly absurd but that makes sense in its own way, like Terry Pratchett might write.) I didn’t mind being much older than the target audience, though, since I mainly picked it up to be a quick “palate cleanser” between some heavier and more serious books.

Usually with sort story collections I like to talk about each story individually, but there are fourteen of them and that would make this review incredibly long. So I’m just going to hit a few highlights.

• “Dok the Caveman” was one of my favorites. The story of Dok inventing all manner of ridiculous things like “cooking” and “the wheel” to the great frustration of his tribemates was witty and highly amusing.
• “Hercules the Tortoise” was the anomaly of this collection. It didn’t read like a Terry Pratchett story and was, quite frankly, boring and forgettable.
• “The 59A Bus Goes Back in Time” is what would have happened if Terry Pratchett wrote the Magic School Bus, and though I would have liked more out of it I still found it highly entertaining.
• “Edwo the Boring Knight” was another favorite, because I found the idea of a prince being sent off to seek his fortune while his only skill is being impossibly, mind-numbingly boring, completely hilarious.

Any one of these stories could be expanded into an enjoyable full-length book, and I would enjoy more from each of these zany ideas. Part of what made them feel so much like they were for children was the way they were so stripped down and lacking the complexity of most of the other Terry Pratchett books I’ve read. But on the other hand, most of them were quite fun to read, and I now have some stories in my back pocket for next time my husband’s little cousins ask me to tell them a story.

Review: Girls Made of Snow and Glass

Image from Melissa Bashardoust

Title: Girls Made of Snow and Glass

Author: Melissa Bashardoust

Genre: Fairy Tale

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, emotional abuse, mild body horror

Back Cover:

At sixteen, Mina’s mother is dead, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone – has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.

Fifteen-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s order. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. Now Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something like hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do and who to be to win back the only mother she’s ever known, or else defeat her once and for all.

Entwining the stories of both Lynet and Mina in the past and present, Girls Made of Snow and Glass traces the relationship of two young women doomed to be rivals from the start. Only one can win all, while the other must lose everything, unless both can find a way to reshape themselves and their story.

Review:

This may be the best fairytale retelling I’ve ever read. Girls Made of Snow and Glass is a retelling of Snow White, told from both “snow white” and the stepmother’s points of view, and it is fantastic.

First, there’s Lynet. The Snow White character in the story, she feels stifled by her overprotective father and would rather climb trees and scale the castle walls than be quiet and demure like her mother, the way her father wants her to be. She loves her father, but she also wants to be her own person, free from the shadow of the dead queen. She has an internal struggle between who she wants to be and who other people want her to be (which I found very relatable), and in the end she’s strong and courageous enough to make her own way in the world. I loved her.

Then there’s Mina, who, despite being the stepmother of the story, is far from evil. She was actually a very sympathetic character who knows she’s broken because she can’t love (and, she thinks, can’t be loved). I honestly didn’t root for Lynet to beat Mina because I cared about Mina, too. I wanted them both to win somehow.

If there’s a villain in this story at all, it’s Mina’s father, the magician Gregory. He’s cruel and cunning and selfish, and he has dark plans for Lynet that don’t get revealed until towards the end. He’s not even in most of the book, but his shadow hovers over Mina and she’s (rightfully) afraid of him.

The story alternates perspectives between Lynet and Mina. You get to see how Mina came to marry Lynet’s father and how having a glass heart incapable of love affected her life. You also get Lynet’s struggle between her love for her father and wanting to be who he wants her to be, and her desire to be her own independent person. Then circumstances cause the two women to clash. And while ostensibly the plot is about this clash between Mina and Lynet, with a little bit of politics and magic, it’s really more about the characters. How they’re feeling, how they think, how they react. Mina and Lynet are excellently written, and reading about their emotional journeys was fantastic.

And probably the best part – it has a happy ending!

Of course, the book isn’t perfect. Mainly when it came to the romance. I can’t even say that Lynet falls in love with someone, because the romance doesn’t get enough time or attention for that to really be shown. She likes this person and they kiss towards the end, so there’s definitely some romance going forward after the end of the book, but it was really sidelined during the main story and the love interest isn’t even in most of the book. I liked the romance, it was cute and I think it was a good way of showing Lynet growing up, but removing it would hardly have affected the story at all.

This book is amazing. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in a while, and probably one of the best fairytale retellings I’ve ever read. I loved how it was character-driven while still being a fantasy story and not neglecting either element. I enthusiastically recommend this book.

Review: A World Without Princes

Image from The School for Good and Evil

Title: A World Without Princes

Series: The School for Good and Evil #2

Author: Soman Chainani

Genre: Fairy Tale

Trigger Warnings: Kidnapping, attempted violence

Spoiler Warning: This book is a sequel, so it will have spoilers for The School for Good and Evil.

Back Cover:

In the New York Times bestselling sequel to Soman Chainani’s debut, The School for Good and Evil, Sophie and Agatha are back in Gavaldon, living out their Happily Ever After, but life isn’t quite the fairy tale they expected.

Witches and princesses reside at the School for Girls, where they’ve been inspired to live a life without princes, while Tedros and the boys are camping in Evil’s old towers. A war is brewing between the schools, but can Agatha and Sophie restore the peace? Can Sophie stay good with Tedros on the hunt? And whose heart does Agatha’s belong to—her best friend or her prince?

Read to: Page 76

Review:

Immediately after finishing The School for Good and Evil, I reserved this book at the library. The School for Good and Evil was fantastic, and I wanted to read more and find out how the story turned out.

I’m not really sure how to put into words how I feel about this book. In many ways, it was a letdown. (Obviously, since I didn’t finish it.) But it could have been great and I’m really disappointed in some of the choices made for this book.

Warning: long review ahead – I have a lot of Feelings about this one. Scroll to the bottom for the tl;dr version.

Agatha and Sophie bothered me a tiny bit – not in the sense that I didn’t like them, because I still loved them, but in the sense that they weren’t the same people they were at the end of book one and it felt like a little of the character development from the first book had been undone (although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why). Overall, it was a minor problem that I probably could look past, especially if they developed in this book as much as they did in the first one.

I loved the world. I loved it in the first book and I loved it here. There were some changes to the school (which I didn’t get fully introduced to before I stopped reading), but I think I would have enjoyed those, too. The entire concept of the world is amazing and I love it.

My main problem is the entire concept of this book – at the end of book one, Agatha chose Sophie over everything else, and now she’s regretting her choice and wishing she had chosen Prince Tedros instead. I hated that. It didn’t fit with Agatha’s character and it was a horrible, forced straight romance angle when if there had to be a romance, a romance between Agatha and Sophie would fit so much better.

And it’s not just because I like gay romances better than straight ones (although I will admit I do). There really is a lot more potential for a romance between Agatha and Sophie than between Agatha and Tedros. Agatha obviously cares for Sophie a lot (protecting/helping Sophie was 99% of her motivation in the first book), and Sophie seems to also care, if not as deeply.  Book one ends with a very emotional, touching moment where Agatha chooses Sophie above everyone else. Even at the beginning of this book, they still care a lot about each other and stick together through everything.

On the other hand, Agatha barely interacted with Tedros at all in the previous book (except for trying to help Sophie catch is interest). She recognized him as handsome, like everyone, but instantly flagged him as unattainable and, to the best of my memory, never even considered liking him romantically. He’s hardly even a major character – he barely got any page time in book one, as the focus was more on Agatha and Sophie. Any feelings Agatha has for him can only be motivated by his status (son of King Arthur) or his dashing good looks, which is incredibly shallow and not something I think Agatha would do.

As my fiance pointed out, the concept of a character making an important choice and then regretting it later on is an interesting one, and I will admit that. It’s unique and interesting. But there’s no reason for Agatha to regret her choice except for Soman trying to force a romance where one won’t work. All through the first book, Agatha chose Sophie. She always chose Sophie over everything, even her own Happily Ever After. A romance growing out of their deep friendship would make perfect sense. Even a plot without a romance at all would be fine. But whatever attraction exists between Agatha and Tedros is based on looks or status, which is shallow and sad. (And honestly I love Agatha and want better than that for her.)

Okay, I’m going to stop now because this review is getting long. But I have a lot of feelings about this book. It could have been great with an Agatha+Sophie romance (or even no romance at all). But what’s actually going on in A World Without Princes … it’s disappointing and out of character.

And who knows, maybe it would have gotten better if I’d continued the book. But it seemed like the entire premise would be Agatha trying to redo her choice between Sophie and Tedros, and I honestly didn’t want to read about that, no matter how much I loved the characters in book one.

tl;dr

Any feelings Agatha had for Tedros were based on his looks and/or his status and (in my opinion) forced by the author. In book one, Agatha always chose Sophie over everything else, and there’s no reason for her to stop that now. If the concept was different and we returned to the School for Good and Evil for different reasons, with Agatha staying in character and continuing to choose Sophie – or at least getting to know Tedros enough that having to choose made sense – I would have loved this book. (And I would have loved it even more if Agatha and Sophie fell in love.) But as it is, I was disappointed and upset that this book wasn’t the sequel I wanted.

Definitely read The School for Good and Evil, it’s totally worth it. And give this one a shot. I admit I can be really picky about certain things, and maybe if you keep going it gets better. It wasn’t necessarily a bad book – it just wasn’t the one that I wanted. Maybe you’ll like it more than I did.

The School for Good and Evil series:

1. The School for Good and Evil
2. A World Without Princes
3. The Last Ever After
4. Quests for Glory

Review: The School for Good and Evil

Image from The School for Good and Evil

Title: The School for Good and Evil

Series: The School for Good and Evil #1

Author: Soman Chainani

Genre: Fairy Tale

Trigger Warnings: Violence, blood, death, fatphobia

Back Cover:

At the School for Good and Evil, failing your fairy tale is not an option.

With her glass slippers and devotion to good deeds, Sophie knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good, while Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks and wicked black cat, seems a natural fit for the villains in the School for Evil.

The two girls soon find their fortunes reversed—Sophie’s dumped in the School for Evil, while Agatha finds herself in the School for Good. But what if the mistake is the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are?

The School for Good and Evil is an epic journey into a dazzling new world, where the only way out of a fairy tale is to live through one.

Review:

I picked this up because the cover was pretty cool and the concept – a school that trained fairy tale heroes and villains – was pretty darn awesome.

To start with, this book was a lot thicker than I expected. I was expecting a thin little paperback, not a nearly-500-page epic. And I definitely wasn’t expecting all of the twists, turns, betrayals, character growth, and, well, everything.

The book starts by immediately throwing you into a world where every year, the mysterious School Master kidnaps two village kids and every kid is afraid of being taken except Sophie, who is super excited to be taken from the boring village and sent to the School for Good, where she can focus on her beauty and win a handsome prince.

Except it’s pretty obvious from the beginning that Sophie isn’t as good as she thinks she is. Her “good works” are donating face wash to the orphanage, hanging mirrors in public restrooms, and spending time with Agatha, the frumpy, ugly, unfriendly girl who lives in the house in the graveyard (who she doesn’t particularly like, mind you, but sees as a good charity case).

The story is told in alternating perspectives between Sophie and Agatha, so you get to see what Agatha is thinking, too. Agatha actually cares about Sophie – she doesn’t necessarily consider them friends (she’s aware she’s just a charity case), but she cares anyway. A lot of her motivation during the first part of the book is to rescue Sophie from the School of Evil and get her home.

I really want to say more about these girls, but it’s hard because they change and grow so much throughout the book. Part of it is learning why they got put in the schools they did, part of it is leveraging their own unique strengths. (Sophie’s skills and interest in fashion and beauty are never played as a bad thing and are actually shown as a strength.) I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but they change a lot and it’s amazing.

It’s hard to say much about the plot. It starts off with Agatha wanting to keep Sophie from getting kidnapped, but that goes out the window pretty quick and then it’s Sophie wanting to get to the School for Good and Agatha wanting to get them both out of there and back to their village. And that’s the gist of it – but there’s so much more. Class rankings. Surviving things. Extra special magic powers. And I can’t say too much because spoilers.

The school itself is absolutely amazing. You get both Sophie and Agatha’s perspectives, so you get to see both schools, and it’s fantastic. They’re exactly what you would expect from schools for fairy-tale Good and fairy-tale Evil, but it’s all the little details (like the existence of beauty spas in the Good school and a classroom made of ice with a torture chamber beneath it in the Evil school) that makes it absolutely amazing.

I almost said the school was the best part of the book for me, but it’s hard to really say that. All of it was fantastic. Each element blended with the rest of them to create a fascinating world, an enthralling plot, and masterfully-written characters that made me devour the book in one day. (Yes, I read all 500 pages in one day. It was that good.)

There were only two downsides to this book. One was fatphobia, which was mild and mostly stemming from Sophie’s vain perspective. The other was the ending – not that it was bad, but it had the opportunity to be gay and wasn’t.

I don’t have enough positive adjectives to say about this book. I was expecting a fairy tale and I got so much more. So much more. I didn’t know this was a series when I picked this up, but I’m so glad it is because I want more. I want more of these characters and I want more of this world.

I’m trying not to ramble, so just … read the book.

(And if you’re a fan, the School for Good and Evil website is really awesome.)

The School for Good and Evil series:

1. The School for Good and Evil
2. A World Without Princes
3. The Last Ever After
4. Quests for Glory

Webcomic Spotlight: Princess Princess

Image from Strangely Katie

Title: Princess Princess

Author: Katie O’Neill

Genre: Fairy Tale

Trigger Warnings: None

Summary:

Amira and Sadie are two very different princesses who decide to take their happily ever after into their own hands.

Review:

This webcomic is really short (44 pages), so I decided to make this more of a spotlight than a full review. Because I just can’t not tell you guys about it.

The best parts:

The art is adorable and the character designs are awesome.

Seriously, just look at these two.

The plot is absolutely amazing and there’s a happy ending.

It’s hilarious.

It subverts all the tropes in the most amazing way possible.

And it’s short, so you can devour it in less than half an hour. So seriously take a moment to read this. It is 500% gay, 5,000% adorable, and 50,000% worth the read.

You can read it for free here!