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Tag: fairy tale retellings

Review: In the Vanishers’ Palace, Aliette de Bodard

Friends, I am very, very choosy about my “Beauty and the Beast” retellings. To the best of my recollection, the only one that I have ever loved is Robin McKinley’s Beauty.1 I liked Uprooted, but I loved it best when it was doing things other than retelling “Beauty and the Beast.” I hear good things about W. R. Gingell’s Masque, but I am not pinning my hopes on it. So when I tell you that I was blown away by Aliette de Bodard’s novella In the Vanishers’ Palace, a queer retelling of “Beauty and the Beast,” I want you to…

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Poison, Sarah Pinborough

Sooooo remember when I said that I was concerned that Poison wasn’t going to work out for me? Poison…didn’t work out for me. By rough synopsis, Poison should have worked flawlessly for me. It’s a dark retelling of the “Snow White” story (if you’re thinking, That story doesn’t need to be retold dark; it was dark when we got here, I feel you) that deals with the complicated relationship between Snow White and her stepmother and the expectations men have of women. Except it doesn’t really deal with those things, at least not in any way that’s convincing or surprising. It looks like it’s…

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Review: Snow in Summer, Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen is one of those authors I feel I should love more than I do. I have enjoyed her books, some of them quite a bit, and she wrote me and my sister a terribly nice email when we were kids. But I always go into her books feeling that they will be the perfect fit for me, and then instead they are like that one dress you buy because you think it’s going to be the perfect work dress, and it looks pretty but the pockets are slightly uneven and the way the neckline is prevents you from…

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