Having inhaled a couple of Seanan McGuire’s which had me jonesing for more fairytales, when I came across this, apparently a Modern Fairytale and cult classic as well as having a cover that would have looked at home on any 70s prog rock album, it looked like I’d found my fix. Sadly, it turned out that this was not the kind of book I had been looking for…
Supposedly a retelling of the ballad of Tam Lin, Dean apparently saved all of this for the last 20 or so pages…out of more than 400 that simply followed the incredibly smug Janet Carter as she started university, guffawed to the point of having to hold herself up at things that really weren’t that funny, was a cow to one of her room-mates, judged everyone by their choice of major, got weird about her room-mates’ birth control, hooked up with the most pretentious men on campus, speculated about a ghost, and got knocked up. There are lots of allusions to classics majors being strange – although why they are thought to be so is beyond me – and Janet’s advisor (from the Classics department) behaves slightly oddly, but there is absolutely zero fairytale feel until the aforementioned last 20 pages, although even then it still felt pretty half-arsed.
If I’d read this when it was published (back in the 70s), or when I was a lot younger, it’s possible that I may have enjoyed this a little more. But as it was, when I wasn’t actively annoyed, I was bored. I’ll be adding this one to the charity shop donation bag.