Tag: fairy tales

The Lunar Chronicles

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Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter by Marissa Meyer

Genre: sci-fi/fantasy

I read it as a(n): audiobook

Narrator: Rebecca Soler

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars for the series as a whole

The four main novels in the Lunar Chronicles series are all thoroughly tied up with each other, in the most delightful way possible. Cinder sets up most of the world-building and character introductions. The overarching plot is that Cinder, a young, part-cyborg mechanic from the Eastern Commonwealth (formerly China) and Kai, the Eastern Commonwealth’s Emperor, are trying to find Selene, the Lunar princess and rightful heir to Luna’s throne, who was long thought to have died in a fire as an infant. Kai doesn’t think that is true and is on a mission to find Selene and overthrow Levana, the evil Lunar Queen who killed her sister (the true queen) and her niece and took the Lunar throne for herself. The secondary plot is Levana’s determination to take over Earth, using what the Lunars call their “Gift” – the ability to sense and manipulate a person’s bioelectrical energy. As a result, Lunars can force humans or Lunars with weaker Gifts to do anything they want them to do. The Lunar gift has varying strength, apparently based on one’s social class, and the queen is the most powerful of all, followed by her thaumaturges, her highest councillors and advisors. They can force people to do anything from being silent to committing murder or suicide. The Lunar queen is one nasty bitch. Cinder plans to stop her.

Throughout the four books, Cinder is joined by Iko, the bubbly android with a faulty personality chip; Dr. Erland, the brilliant but unethical scientist trying to find a cure for a disease ravaging humanity; Carswell Thorn, an irreverent American spaceship captain who broke out of prison with Cinder; Scarlet, a French farmer whose missing grandmother knows something vital about Selene; a street fighter named Wolf who knows where Scarlet’s grandmother is; Cress, a Lunar girl who was born without the Lunar Gift and who has been kept alone on a satellite for years, forced to do technological spying for the Queen; Jason, a Royal Lunar guard who isn’t sure what side he should be on; and Winter, Levana’s stepdaughter who is slowly going insane because she refuses to use her Lunar gift.

Levana has a cure for the disease but she won’t give it to Earth unless Kai agrees to marry her and make her his Empress. Doing so will save millions of lives but also will all but ensure that Levana will kill Kai and use her power as Empress to take over Earth. She could do so through her Gift. Kai agrees to marry Levana to get the antidote, even though it’s the last thing he wants to do. Cinder, meanwhile, gets arrested for crashing Kai and Levana’s engagement ball, then breaks out and makes new friends while she is trying to help track down people who might know about the Lunar princess, Selene. 

For those folks who are unaware, the four novels in this series are retellings of the classic fairy tales – you guessed it – Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White. Meyer centers them all in a sci-fi setting, which is fucking awesome. It is set in some indeterminate point in the future. The years refer to the time since the 4th World War and the signing of a global peace treaty, so we don’t really know exactly how far ahead it is. The political climate is complex and nicely explained within the context of the overarching plot. I like that it doesn’t beat you over the head with billions of minute info-dump details but also doesn’t just gloss over politics altogether. Readers get a fully developed political system that is delivered as relevant bits of info throughout the series. 

Similarly, each character is a complete, complex, imperfect, and conflicted individual. They each have their own distinctive voice and ideas. Their personalities are clear – I don’t think anyone would ever be confused as to whether they were reading Cinder or Cress, Thorn or Kai. I really loved that they are all imperfect. None of them are perfectly good or always certain of the right thing to do. They all are trying to do what they think is the right thing, but what that is doesn’t always mesh with what the others think. They are all good people – well, Cinder’s group is. Levana and her Lunars are garbage and you love to hate them – but they also all do “bad” things sometimes. Then they are conflicted about the things they did and the reasons they did them. No one is 100% certain and I think that’s great. It’s so much more realistic that way. 

I also really loved the way the various characters and stories got all woven together. It was satisfying in a way the original fairy tales are not since they are self-contained stories of their own. It is more interesting when they all mingle and know each other. Kind of like the idea that the hunter who killed Bambi’s mom was Gaston from the film version of Beauty and the Beast, or that the sunken ship Ariel swims around in is the one that went down carrying Anna and Elsa’s parents. It’s all the same universe, folks. Similarly, Meyer weaves the various threads of these four fairy tales very nicely together into one satisfying Gordian knot of a bow.

The one thing I think was not at all well developed was the diversity. As in, I don’t think there was any anywhere in the entire series. Based on location and naming convention, it’s assumed that Cinder, Kai, Cinder’s stepmother and stepsisters, and Kai’s court are Asian. But there are no hints or outright descriptions of Asian culture otherwise. The same is true for all the other groups of beings as well. Nothing about them stands out as American or European or Commonwealth other than, in a couple cases, an accent. Even Cinder and Kai do not have any kind of accent that could be identified as coming from an Asian region. Winter is described as having dark skin and curly hair, and on the audiobook cover she is depicted as a young Black woman. Other than Winter, I am not entirely sure there were really any people of color in the series at all. 

The same is true for LGBTQ+ and disabled characters. There wasn’t a single one of either community in the entire series unless you want to count Winter since she’s slowly going insane. But that is an identifiable disease within the Lunar Chronicles universe and by the end of the series she’s being treated for it so she can be “normal.” Maybe she meant for Thorn to be disabled because he lost his vision? But again, that lasted for about a month and then he went back to his old sighted self. You could really, really stretch and say Cress has social anxiety disorder, but again, she’s gotten over it by the end of the series and her shyness a) isn’t a disability and b) was a direct result of being locked away and never interacting with anyone besides the thaumaturge in charge of her for like a decade. Anyone would be a little socially awkward after that. So yeah. Meyer seriously needs to do better in terms of any kind of representation. 

The lack of diversity makes me rate the series as a whole at 4 stars. I think Cinder, Cress, and Winter each rate  4 stars on their own as well. Scarlet was my least favorite of the series and I give it 3 stars. 

I read these four books via audiobook. The narrator, Rebecca Soler, did a good job. Maybe a tad over emotional in some places where it wasn’t really warranted. But overall she was a decent narrator though I don’t think she will ever be one of my favorites. 

I definitely recommend the series to all who love fairy tales and a good sci-fi space opera. It hits all those spots.

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Nettle and Bone

kristen3 Comments

Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
Genre: fantasy
I read it as a(n): hardback
Length: 243 pp
Her Grace’s rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Marra is a princess of a small, unimportant kingdom that has the misfortune to also have the best harbor in the world. To keep the kingdom safe, her eldest sister is married to the prince of the Northern Kingdom. When she dies without a child, Marra’s next sister is married to him. Marra is sent to a convent where she will be out of the way but that doesn’t prevent her from learning a dark, centuries-old secret.


To save her sister and her kingdom, Marra sets off to kill her brother-in-law with the help of a scary dust-wife, an addled and wicked-but-doesn’t-want-to-be godmother, a quasi-suicidal warrior, a dog made of bones, and a demon-possessed chicken. It is exciting for everyone.


I loved this book so much! It was a great dark fantasy that read very similarly to something Neil Gaiman might have written. That is never a bad thing.


The story was exciting with lots of references to traditional fairy tales made along the way. There’s a little Goblin Market, a little zombie apocalypse, a little tatterskin, a little Sleeping Beauty, just a little of everything mixed into a fun and original tale.


I definitely plan to read anything else by this author and strongly recommend that everyone else do the same.

Favorite lines:

  • It was a cruel spirit that would punish starving people for what they had been forced to eat, but the spirits had never pretended to be kind (4).
  • He was a good dog. He had excellent bones and even if she had used too much wire and gotten it a bit muddled around the toes and one of the bones of the tail, she’d think that a decent person would stop and admire the craftsmanship before they screamed and ran away (21).
  • Then again, peasants and princesses all shit the same and have their courses the same, so I suppose it’s no surprise that babies all come out the same way, too. Having thus accidentally anticipated a few centuries’ worth of revolutionary political thought, Marra got down to the business of boiling water and making tea (36-37).
  • …the baby emerged into the world, looked around, burst into tears. “You get used to it,” the Sister told the infant… It was bloody and wrinkly and reddish gray and looked like the sort of thing you would drive back to hell with holy water (37).
  • The flat stones made for uneven footing. … They rattled and slid underfoot, talking to each other in stone language, saying all the words they had been saving up until the next time a human walked across them (66).
  • The old woman had not struck her as religious.
    But I could easily imagine someone making a saint out of her, a hundred years hence. Maybe some of the saints were like that, too – cranky, old women with strange gifts (77).
  • “How did you get a demon in your chicken?”
    “The usual way. Couldn’t put it in the rooster. That’s how you get basilisks (82).
  • “Enough of this place,” said the dust-wife. “Everyone have their souls still? Shadows still attached? Then let’s go before that changes” (97).
  • What did the abbess used to say? That our own flaws infuriate us in other people? (132).
  • Nothing is fair, except that we try to make it so. That’s the point of humans, maybe, to fix things the gods haven’t managed (181).
  • Injustice and the desire for revenge age the body, but they keep the soul going halfway to forever (199).

Spinning Silver

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spinning silverSpinning Silver by Naomi Novik (Website | Twitter )

Genre: fantasy

Setting: someplace very like Russia

I read it as a(n): hardback

Source: my own collection 

Length: 466 pp

Published by: Del Rey (2018)

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Miryem’s father and grandfather are moneylenders. Her grandfather is good at it; her father, not so much. Tired of living in poverty and seeing her parents be taken advantage of, Miryem takes it upon herself to begin collecting the debts her father is owed. She is so good at it that the people of her town grumble that she can change silver into gold. This, unfortunately, draws the attention of the Staryk king, a being from a snowy alternate world where gold is precious. He takes Miryem and commands that she change all his silver into gold.

Irina is the daughter of a duke, not beautiful and viewed only as a pawn by her father. Through a set of jewelry with magical properties, Irina becomes beautiful to all who see her, except to the tsar, a young man she’s known since childhood and who is cruel. Naturally, her father contrives to marry her to the tsar.

Wanda is a peasant in Miryem’s town. When her father is unable to pay his debt, Miryem allows Wanda to come work for her family to help repay it. Over the course of the months, Wanda and her brothers become family to Miryem. Their love and aid help Miryem and Irina to rid their land of a horrible demon that is hell-bent on feeding on Irina – unless she can bring him a snow king.

I loved this book. I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading it, but I’m glad I did at last. I liked Novik’s earlier novel, Uprooted, well enough, though I remember not being thrilled with the verbal and mental abuse the dragon put the protagonist through. This book didn’t have that. What it does have are three very strong young women who are each, in their own ways, selfless and put the needs of their loved ones, whoever they may be, before themselves. Naturally, I like books that show women banding together for a common goal. Sometimes, it goes overboard and shows them being selfless to the point of overwriting their own needs or personalities, but that didn’t happen in this novel. I think it showed a good and necessary balance between helping others and helping oneself. 

The plot with the tsar and how he got his demon was a great twist. I didn’t see that coming and it added a lot of dimension to his character. He wasn’t just a flat character that is so common in folktales, purely good or purely evil. 

I liked, too, how Novik wove in a lot of Jewish culture and stories with this. I think it was a great blend of cultures and tales – Jewish culture, the girl who could spin straw into gold, and Russian Baba Yaga and Chernobog folktales. I definitely recommend this one. I should check out Novik’s Temeraire series one of these days!

Favorite lines (potential spoilers!):

  • (Irina considering political marriages): But he wasn’t a fool, or cruel. And more to the point, I was reasonably certain he wasn’t going to try and devour my soul. My expectations for a husband had lowered (229-230).
  • I had never seen any Jew but Miryem’s family before except the woman on the line and her son. Now I did not see anyone else. It was a strange feeling. I thought that when Miryem had to go to the Staryk Kingdom maybe it was like this for her. All of a sudden everyone around you was the same as each other but not like you. And then I thought but it was like that for Miryem already. It was like that for her all the time in town. So maybe it hadn’t been so strange (303).
  • But I won’t ever tell you what it is (466). [My favorite last line of a book in a good long while.]

The Winter of the Witch

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42082394The Winter of the Witch: A Novel (Winternight Trilogy) by Katherine Arden

I read it as an: audiobook

Narrator: Kathleen Gati

Source: my own collection

Length: 14:00:00

Publisher: Random House Audio

Year: 2019

Picking up right where The Girl in the Tower left off, Vasilisa Petrovna finds herself the focus of the rage of Moscow’s people after inadvertently burning down a large part of the city. Accused of witchcraft, with the mob’s hatred fanned by the insane monk Konstantin, Vasya manages to escape into the realm of Midnight, a place where all midnights of the past, present, and future exist, but not before making a sacrifice that absolutely gutted me. In Midnight, Vasya meets many new characters, some friendly, others not so much. One of the best was the little mushroom spirit who made it a point to tell everyone that he was the first to support her quest. Baba Yaga also makes an important appearance. Vasya also learns that she has some surprising new abilities and the reasons for them, which draw the attention of the winter king Morozko. His twin brother, Medved, is bent on creating chaos in the spirit world and world of men, and Vasya and Morozko have to find a way to stop him. As if that all weren’t enough for her to worry about, Vasya also has to navigate the politics of the secular world to help save Rus from an invading horde of Tatars.

There isn’t really a good way to summarize this book. It is a satisfying end to the trilogy and I loved it, though I do think it is my least favorite of the three. I am not sure if it is simply because I was listening to it on audio (as I did the other two as well) and, because of work and personal schedules and things, I had a lot of days where I wasn’t able to listen at all, or not with my full attention. It felt a little disjointed in places, but that could have been me. In any case, Arden’s writing remains as lush and evocative as ever. I think I have to buy physical copies of this trilogy and eyeball read them all now, I loved this series that much.

Winter of the Witch dealt closely with destiny, identity, and loyalty, and how those influence people and their interactions. Just so many factors come into play – love, lust, fear, hate – and each one leaves its mark on Vasya. She learns hard lessons and makes some horrific sacrifices. She finds the only kind of love she could tolerate. She finds the place she belongs. She’s grown from a wild little girl into a strong and capable woman, with her own skills and secrets and pain and joys. Any woman would be proud to have a daughter such as her.

Favorite quotes:

“There are no monsters in the world, and no saints. Only infinite shades woven into the same tapestry, light and dark.”

“Yesterday she saved your life, slew a wicked magician, set fire to Moscow and then saved it all in a single night. Do you think she will consent to disappear, for the price of a dowry – for any price?’’

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Image courtesy of Pixabay. Maybe it’s Solovey?

“I was asleep but those two woke me up. I missed you.”

“Who is to say, in the end, that the three guardians of Russia are not a witch, a frost-demon, and a chaos-spirit? I find it fitting.”

Fairy Tales – You’re Doing It Wrong

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170px-little_red_riding_hood_-_project_gutenberg_etext_19993
Little Red is hiding a Glock in her basket!

I’m a big fan of reimagined fairy tales. Huge. I’ll read just about any kind of Arthurian legend I can get my hands on. I love a good retelling of Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. The darker, the better. But a recent NY Times article about the NRA retelling fairy tales sent me from zero to “what the actual fuck?” in zero point six-eight seconds flat. Read More »