I was hooked about two pages into Ember, a romance retelling of “Cinderella” featuring a heroine who is a (mostly) benevolent witch and a prince who is literally cursed by Charm — everyone who meets him loves him, finds him salivatingly handsome, and can’t help but do what he wants. I knew immediately I would want to read everything by this author, which, I’ll mention now, is devastatingly little that is available: three novellas and one short story on Amazon and none published after 2012. […]
Super spy Cinderella is tasked with stopping a killer in Fabletown
The short lived Fables offshoot, Fairest, wrapped up at the same time as its parent title(insert Farewell link). Fairest focused on the side character women of Fables, primarily those traditionally known as the “princesses” and is collected in several volumes. There are also a few stand alone releases called Cinderella, that follow the exploits of Fabletown’s most badass spy. Fairest: In All the Land is not an issue compilation, but a single story told through a mixture of long form text and illustrations. Fables writer […]
A Refreshing New Take on an Old Classic
I don’t know why I put off reading this series for so long. It’s GOOD. Meyer is an excellent story-teller and like alwaysanswerb says, Meyer uses the Cinderella fairy tale as her basis, but the story is 100% her own. I think the thing that makes this absolutely brilliant is moving the plot into a super-advanced technological future where we can’t make any real ties to the bucolic setting of the original fairy tale. Cinder (Cinderella) is a cyborg living in “new” Beijing (the old […]
These fun fairy-tale retellings are feminist as f*ck.
The Stepsister Scheme Jim C. Hines is honestly one of my favorite authors, even though he’s never written a book that I’ve lost my mind* over. What he writes is solid, fun fantasy with a strong feminist backbone. He also seems to have a thing for championing the underdog, and writing stories that subvert traditional story-types. The Princess series, of which I’ve read all but the last book at the time of writing this review, is particularly notable as all the main characters are ladies, […]
Sci-Fi retelling of the Cinderella tale
This is a retelling of the Cinderella tale which takes place in a far future on Earth in a place called “New Beijing”. Cinder is a Cyborg; a brilliant mechanic who works in the marketplace as the (apparently) sole source of income for her stepmother and sisters. She was adopted into her family by the father, who had the misfortune (of course) to die immediately afterward of a very fatal plague. Of course the family falls upon hard times and of course the stepmother and at […]