Audition for the Fox is a novella length
fantasy set in a world I presumed was inspired by East-Asian mythology, but so
lightly that nothing really stands out. It also leans heavily on the fairytale
tradition and stories about wily fox outsmarting everyone.
Nesi, 21, is a descendant of the Bull god,
one of the ninety-nine pillars of a pantheon that consists of animal gods. She’d
been dumped to a temple by her parents as a child, and there she must stay
unless she can find a patron for herself in one of the gods. But she’s already
failed 96 auditions with them, even with her great-great-grandfather the Bull,
and there are only bad options left. Despite warnings, she decides to audition
for the Fox, T’sidaan, who has never taken an acolyte.
Next thing she knows, she’s been sent back
in time 300 years when her country was occupied by supporters of the Wolf. The Wolf
had been a pillar back when there were a hundred of them, but he’s been
permanently banished. We learn why later, and the banishment was deserved. His
supporters are cruel and her people are suffering.
She’s taken in chains to a labour camp
fortress to work for the soldiers of the Wolf with other captives. And the Fox
gives her a task: she must start a revolution. Easier said than done when
everything she tries gets her beaten up and incarcerated. And she’s really back
in time, so if she fails, she’ll change the future of her time too. But little
by little, she learns the wily ways of the fox and with their help, manages to
free everyone. But it’s only the start of the revolution.
This was a good story about good winning
over evil, with morals. It’s narrated like a fairytale, complete with several
stories of the Fox, and is almost solely told instead of shown. The one
exception where the narrative stops and lets the reader watch the characters operate
in real time stands out almost like an anomaly. But in order to tell a massive story of a
revolution in a novella form, the chosen narrative style is basically the only
way to do it. And it works, keeping the reader interested.
We don’t really learn anything about Nesi,
and I only presume she comes from a modern world. But she’s stubborn, strong
and resilient like the Bull and she pushes through. I liked her, but because of
the distancing narrative style, I didn’t really get attached to the couple of
named characters there were besides her. But T’sidaan comes alive through their
stories and turns out to be delightful. In the afterword, the author hints at more
of their adventures with Nesi. I’d read them.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in
exchange for an honest review.
The Summer War is a fairytale set in
fantasy kingdom that shares a border with the fairy summer court. For a
century, a war has raged every summer between the two countries over a fairy
princess who was mistreated by a human king. But now the war is over, thanks to
Celia’s father, the duke.
Celia is twelve and her beloved eldest
brother Argent has just denounced his father and left home for good to be a knight
in the summer court, because he wants to be free to love who he wants. Furious,
Celia wishes he never finds love except in his blade, only for her powers as a
sorceress to manifest at that point, making it a true curse instead.
With a sorcerer to barter with for his
family’s position, Celia’s father arranges a marriage for her with the crown
prince—or she suggests it, as she’s very clever for a twelve-year-old. But when
the time for the wedding comes a couple of years later, she ends up married to
the prince of the summer court instead. He wants revenge for the sister he lost
a century ago, a mere blink in his long life. Celia has to suffer the exact
fate his sister did. But she jumped off a tower and Celia has no intention of
killing herself.
Luckily for her, Argent shows up to fight
for her freedom. But she soon realises it’s the curse pushing him. She’s the
only person who loves him and he wants to die for it to end the curse in his
terms. But the prince can’t reverse his oath either, without suffering fatal
consequences. So, one of the three has to die for the situation to be solved, and
Celia can’t let that happen.
This was a good fairytale. It was fairly
short and could be read in a couple of hours, but a lot happened. Celia
befriended her neglected middle brother after Argent left and the two plotted
to go to the summer court to end Argent’s curse. They even ran their father’s
estate while the duke mourned the loss of his eldest son. The way out of the
curse seemed impossible, but the entire family came together to solve it, and Celia
was the cleverest of all in the end. The good people won and the bad people got
their just deserts, although their fate wasn’t as bad as is usual in fairytales.
No gruesome deaths for them.
The narrative flowed constantly, even
though it was filled with a lot of information and secondary fairytales, and it
was easy to read. It’s not a very memorable story, but it was a pleasant read
for an evening, like a fairytale should be.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in
exchange for an honest review.
Thornhedge is a good retelling of Sleeping Beauty. It’s short, but it has everything a story needs: a sweet, resolute heroine and a hero who believes in her, great emotions and a happy ending.
Toadling is born human, but she’s replaced with a changeling right after birth and brought to the fairy land where she grows up being loved. Then, one day, she’s brought back to the human world to keep in rein the changeling who has replaced her. But it’s easier said than done. Out of options, she spells the changeling to sleep for eternity—until a kind knight arrives and frees them both.
This was a quick read that left me feeling happy. Toadling was delightful, and while Halim was a somewhat forceful character who did what he wanted, he learned to listen to her in the end. I don’t think the story improved for being set in the ‘real’ world instead of a fairy tale land though. The historical references tended to yank me out of the story. But if you want a quick, cute read, this is for you.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
T.
Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) has an amazing ability to write adult fairy tales
that sound exactly like the stories I grew up with. The tone, pace, and tropes
like fairy godmothers in Nettle & Bone are all as should for a comforting
reading experience, no matter the grimness of the story.
Marra is a
princess who has had to watch first the beloved eldest sister and then the second
sister be married off to a prince to protect her country from invasion. If the
second sister dies too, Marra will be next, so she’s whisked off to a cloister
to keep her safe—not from the prince but for him.
Fifteen years
of secluded life later, she’s unprepared, at thirty, to deal with the realisation
that the prince abuses her sister physically and mentally, and the only thing
keeping her relatively safe is to stay pregnant. But that’ll only last until
she delivers a boy.
Filled with
anger for her sister, Marra sets out to save her with a vague notion that such
a heroic act needs a heroic journey and deeds. She meets a witch who gives her
three impossible tasks, and then decides to accompany her on the quest. Good
thing too, because Marra wouldn’t have survived without her. They are joined by
a knight with a death wish and Marra’s fairy godmother who isn’t quite what she
seems.
But it isn’t
just the prince they need to defeat. There’s a curse on his kingdom, and until
that’s dealt with, Marra’s sister and her child are as good as dead.
This was
such a wonderful book. Marra was an excellent character, slightly slow and naïve
for her age, but utterly determined to see her quest through. In the end, her
role in saving her sister was mostly about getting together the people who could
do it for her. The two old witches were brilliant and fun, and the knight a
mature man who was just perfect for Marra. The language was rich and the
narrative delightful, and if the world was a fairly generic fairy tale kingdom,
with Christian concepts like christening thrown in the mix, it didn’t affect my
enjoyment of the story.
I received
a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The Girl in Red by Christina Henry is the latest book in her
series of fairy tale retellings. This one is based on Little Red Riding Hood.
The book started with promise, but it ended up leading nowhere. It has no story
arch and no conclusion. It has a series of events, and then it ends.
The Girl in Red by Christina Henry
The Girl in Red is set in post-apocalyptic America. Most of the population has
been wiped away by a fast-spreading mysterious virus that causes a cough that
kills in a couple of days. Red, Cordelia, believes that the safest place is her
grandmother’s remote house, and she sets out to walk hundreds of miles there
through forests to avoid being taken to government quarantine camps. Militia
and people ready to do anything to survive are some of the obstacles she faces.
In Little Red Riding Hood, the journey through the perilous forest is only
a part of the story, and not even the major part. The important part is when
she reaches the safety of her grandmother’s house and finds that the wolf has
reached there first. That’s when the story happens.
The Girl in Red isn’t that book. We follow Red on her
perilous journey about two thirds of the way when it abruptly ends, followed by
an epilogue showing her reach her grandmother’s house safely. Scent of food
indicates that everything is well there. Along the way, there are two
encounters with the army ready to take Red to a camp. The third, the important
one that should take place after Red believes she’s reached safety, never
happens. The book just ends and the reader is left hanging, wondering if this
could possibly be the entire book. It is.
It seems like the author hasn’t really understood her source material. The
story doesn’t progress anywhere. There are obstacles on Red’s way, some that
force her to kill even, but they don’t form an arch. And the dangers she faces
are amazingly easily overcome too, especially considering the apocalyptic nature of
the setting.The major revelation to Red
seems to be that she’s the Huntsman, not the Little Red Riding Hood. That’s not
enough to carry a book.
In Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf is a seductive force
that lures the hapless girl away from her path so that it can reach the
grandmother’s house first. But in this book, we never learn what the wolf is.
There’s the virus, but then there’s a monster too. I don’t know why the book
needed both, especially since they only serve as a catalyst for the story. It
would have been a different matter, if it had turned out that Red’s grandmother
has the monster incubating inside her too, but the story never reaches that
part of its arch. Instead, it ends just when we learn what the monster looks
like―though not why it exists in the first place.
Red is a disappointing character. She’s a twenty-year-old college student, but
she comes across as a teenager. She has all the makings of a diverse, something
for all character, but none of it has an impact on the story. She has a
prosthetic leg, so she’s not physically perfect. But the prosthesis is just a
prop. Worse, it’s the Chekhov’s gun alluded to throughout the story (‘I hope my
leg don’t give up on me’, ‘I hope I won’t trip’), but which is never fired. She
never falls because of it and it never lets her down at an important moment.
She walks and runs with a heavy backpack on without trouble, she kicks and
defeats grown men without any problems from her leg, and it never even chafes,
forcing her to stop. So what’s the point of giving her such vulnerability? None
that I could figure out.
Red is also black with mixed background, though with such a light skin and
straight hair that she can pass as a Latina, which the author finds important
to mention. Her skin colour has no impact on how she identifies, and apart from
some rednecks who attack her parents at the beginning of the book, the fact
that she’s black plays no role in the book. So what’s the point of mentioning her
skin colour? None.
On top of everything, Red is bisexual. The book has no
romance or sex, and although sexual violence is constantly hinted at, nothing
like that takes place. Why then would it matter that she’s attracted to both
men and women? It doesn’t. So Red only looks good on paper. Her diversity has
no purpose or impact on the story, which is highly disappointing.
Apart from her character, I found myself annoyed with little
details that don’t really matter. Her food comes in tin cans, which is highly
impractical on a long trek because they’re heavy and take a lot of space in a
backpack. She’s hiking for months, but no mention is made of such nuisances
like periods or the availability of toilet paper. How much sanitary products
can she fit in her backpack and still have room for food anyway? She also wins
all the fights she gets into without getting so much as slapped herself,
hacking her opponents to death with her axe. She’s not large or sporty, and has
only attended one self-defence class, yet she’s a killing machine all of a
sudden.
All in all, this is a deeply flawed book at its root. But
the story starts well, and as it’s told in two timelines, before and after, I
kept reading to find out what has led to Red’s current situation. It seems like
it’s going to something bigger, so I didn’t really notice the flaws until it
abruptly ends without delivering what it builds up to. So I gave it three
stars. I was going along with the story right to the sudden end, rooting for
Red. I just wish the rest of the story would have been there too.
