Yên is living on borrowed time. After the world was poisoned by the Vanishers, who introduced viruses and gene mutations and ruined everything and then left, villages only keep people around if they’re useful, and Yên knows she isn’t. So it’s not much of a surprise when the village offers her to the shapeshifter dragon Vu Côn in payment of a healing Vu Côn has performed for them. When she gets to Vu Côn’s palace, she learns that she’s to be a tutor: Vu Côn is a mother, and doesn’t have the time to provide an adequate education to her twin teenagers. But the longer Yên stays at the palace, the more drawn she is to Vu Côn.

The device of the Beast needing the Beauty for something specific is a brilliant one. So often in these retellings, the Beauty character has nothing much to do except wander around the palace poking her nose into things and getting into trouble. Here, Yên immediately has a task, and Aliette de Bodard won my heart completely with these two kids. The truism about teenagers is that they’re sulky, uncompliant, and irresponsible. Thông and Liên are definitely finding ways to separate themselves from their mother, as teenagers do, — especially Thông — but they both care deeply about being good people and doing the right thing. It’s a major subplot in the book! How to raise children into good people; how to be a good person despite one’s worst instincts. In these troubled times, but also always, these are themes that resonate with me very strongly.

The bigger pitfall in “Beauty and  the Beast” stories is, of course, consent. Fairy tales have a dreamy, unspecified quality that makes it possible for them to get away with leaving a lot of things unexplained. Retellings don’t have that luxury, and it’s rare for me to feel happy with the way an author manages the question of whether Beauty, a lifelong prisoner, can meaningfully consent to a relationship with her captor. In the Vanishers’ Palace cares deeply about this question, and the broader corollary of what it looks like to be the more powerful one in a relationship. What can we decide for the ones we love? What should we? Vu Côn grapples with this throughout the book, and I love where she ends up.

An atmospheric gem of a retelling. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy when it comes out tomorrow.

PS: In the language of the book, “I” pronouns are gendered, so that when a person says “I” you immediately know what pronouns to use for them. What a great idea! Is English working on this? Gendered first-person neopronouns? Can we have those?

PPS: I received an e-ARC of this book for review consideration.

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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 going to, but we never really get a grip on Snow White’s stepmother’s true feelings for Snow White, or learn in any depth how she became the (evil) way that she is. Instead, Poison tells the Snow White story pretty straight. Which, if I’d wanted the story told straight, I’d just have read the story, in Grimm or Andrew Lang or whatever.

Now, I will say that I loved the ending. It’s no darker than the foregoing events of the book, but it twists the fairy tale in a way that the rest of the book fails to do. When I realized the book was over, and that was genuinely the way it was going to end, I was delighted with Pinborough’s audacity. Whether that will be enough to make me pick up more of her work — we’ll see.

I am participating in Carl’s Once Upon a Time challenge, and this has been my Fairy Tale book for it. Yet to come are a mythology book, after which I will have completed my Quest! Visit the reviews site to see what other people have been reading.

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Snow in Summer is pretty good. It’s a retelling of the Snow White story, set in mid-1900s Appalachia. Snow in Summer, called Summer, is seven years old when her mother dies. For four years her father sinks deeper into his sadness, and Summer is cared for primarily by her mother’s cousin, Nancy. Then one day, her father comes home–seemingly happy again–with a new stepmother.

The sense of dread in this book is incredible. As soon as Stepmama shows up and starts calling Summer “Snow” instead of “Summer,” you are taken over with tension. Stepmama’s malevolence toward Summer (now always called Snow) manifests in a dozen different ways, and Summer isn’t able to predict what they will be. When Stepmama tells Summer that she may attend church with Aunt Nancy until she turns fourteen, at which point she must attend Stepmama’s church instead, you aren’t exactly sure what Summer should be afraid of, but you’re terrified of whatever it is. This tension builds and builds and builds until the crucial moment, when Stepmama abandons Summer with a boy she calls Hunter.

So two-thirds of the book is this rising, rising, rising dread, and that’s very good, but the final third was a let-down. Once Summer reaches the dwarves’ house, the rest of the fairy tale plays out quickly. The ending feels too easy: I didn’t want Summer to have to be rescued by a Prince Charming we hadn’t met yet (and she isn’t), but the way Stepmama eventually meets her defeat happens so fast. I wanted the battle to be more battley. I wanted the ascending levels of danger from the fairy tale: First the ribbon, then the comb, then the apple. I am an unabashed partisan for the ascending tricolon.

Other reviews: Kirkus and Publishers Weekly were both quite positive! The Book Smugglers felt more like I did about it.

And hey, I can’t be the only one: What authors seem like they would be a perfect fit for you, but aren’t?

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