Tag Archives: fairy tale retelling

Review of the Mad Hatters and March Hares Anthology

I won a copy of Mad Hatters and March Hares through Goodreads.

Description:
From master anthologist Ellen Datlow comes an all-original of weird tales inspired by the strangeness of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

Between the hallucinogenic, weird, imaginative wordplay and the brilliant mathematical puzzles and social satire, Alice has been read, enjoyed, and savored by every generation since its publication. Datlow asked eighteen of the most brilliant and acclaimed writers working today to dream up stories inspired by all the strange events and surreal characters found in Wonderland.

Featuring stories and poems from Seanan McGuire, Jane Yolen, Catherynne M. Valente, Delia Sherman, Genevieve Valentine, Priya Sharma, Stephen Graham Jones, Richard Bowes, Jeffrey Ford, Angela Slatter, Andy Duncan, C.S.E. Cooney, Matthew Kressel, Kris Dikeman, Jane Yolen, Kaaron Warren, Ysbeau Wilce, and Katherine Vaz.

Review:
I think it took me a decade to listen to all of these stories. Like most anthologies, I liked some of them quite a lot and others not so much. Some seemed to just take the excuse of being about wonderland to dash non-sense on a page and call it ‘artistic.’ The narrators did a lovely job though. I thought the male narrator (Summerer) was the better of the two.

Book Review of The Bitches of Everafter, by Barbra Annino

I’m still on my road trip and let me tell you it’s great for getting my reading done. As a bonus, I seem to have internet again, so I can still post. Just to repeat myself though, there is no guarantee I will tomorrow or the next day. So, if I stop posting it means I’ve been physically serrated from the digital teat and I’ll show back up when I reach civilization and wi-fi again. Now, on to the review.

The Bitches of EverafterI downloaded a copy of The Bitches of Everafter (by Barbra Annino) from Amazon when it was free.

Description from Goodreads:
These are not the mild-mannered maidens of your childhood. These are fallen princesses and fierce women with no recollection of who they are, where they came from, or how they arrived in a mysterious town called Everafter. All they know is that they’ve been sentenced to a stretch in a half-way house by a malicious judge with an ax to grind. They’ve been stripped of their freedom, their kingdoms, and their true loves. Now, they have nothing left to lose. 

Snow White is the newest parolee to arrive at Granny’s House for Girls. It isn’t long before she learns that her housemates harbor secrets, and that the mansion itself is a meandering enigma. She stumbles upon forbidden doorways, ghostly passages, and walls that seem to breathe. Determined to find out what’s really happening inside those old walls, Snow embarks on a dangerous discovery mission. Not everyone is thrilled about her nosing around. In fact, there are some who would kill to keep the secrets that the house—and its occupants—hold. 

Review:
This was a cute idea and the author managed to pull it off, but the shtick really did get old quickly. After a while it just started to feel ridiculous. It did make me laugh more than once though and the writing is pretty good. But if I was using ratings, I would take off half a start for not being a complete arc.

For real, some people might call this a cliff-hanger, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I don’t even think precipitous cliff-hanger is accurate, because nothing wraps up in this story. It literally just ends. I firmly believe that in order to be a cliff-hanger the book needs to leave something open for continuation while some part of the story concludes, thus marking the end of the book. That doesn’t happen here. This feels MUCH more like a serial than a series and I HATE serials. Why would I want only part of a story? I won’t bother with the next installment. Because this is a trilogy, so the next one will probably be just as incomplete. (See, author-person, you’ve completely created distrust in your reader.)