Browsing all articles tagged with fairy tales.
Over The Garden Wall – TV Series Review
“Leave if you wish, but remember: the beast haunts these woods, ever singing its mournful melody…” When I was young, I loved the fantasy section of the library. Not content with just the typical My Teacher Is A Werewolf! or Vampires in Space titles, I’d comb both the kids and adult sections alike for books […]
The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden
Katherine Arden’s debut novel, The Bear and the Nightingale, was as charming and magical a debut novel as you could hope to find in 2016. Drawing comparisons to Neil Gaiman, Naomi Novik, and Robin Hobb, Arden’s debut became a bestseller, but more importantly, it marked the introduction of an incredible new voice, one that repackaged […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Dragons
This month we decided to give you a treat. Something grand. Something terrifying. Creatures you complained about being not depicted as they should be. This month our entrants wrote about dragons! Absolve yourself and picture them as the menacing, intelligent, magical, godlike terrors they are. Or not. You never know what our writers are going […]
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Recently, it seemed that no matter where I turned on the internet, someone was mentioning—and praising—Angela Carter. Maybe it was because of the recent biography, or maybe it was just the universe’s way of pointing me to a new writer and a crucial text I somehow hadn’t read yet. And after a little digging, I […]
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
As a fantasy reader who makes his living in marketing and communications, I am perhaps more jaded than most when it comes to books that are compared to some of the greatest in the genre prior to their release date. How many times have we seen books touted as “the next Lord of the Rings,” […]
Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente
Simply put, I loved Six-Gun Snow White. Although many have adapted fairy tales across a variety of media, very few have done it this well. This isn’t a simple retelling or putting an old tale in new set dressing; Catherynne M. Valente transforms the story of Snow White and tells it beautifully, painfully well. She […]
Roses and Rot by Kat Howard
Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers. Please read with caution if you’ve yet to finish the book. This is the thing about fairy tales: You have to live through them, before you get to happily ever after. That ever after has to be earned, and not everyone makes it that far. There are stories […]
HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
“This is all it takes for people to plunge into insanity: one night alone with themselves and what they fear most.” Witches have a long history running through folklore, myth and fable, through the fairy tale and into modern fantasy and horror. As such they tap into a deep and primal well of our fears […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Fairy Tales
Some are funny and silly. Some are dark and strange. But all of them have a morale, a (more or less fixed) narrative, and rules. This month’s short story contest features fairy tales. In fairy tales, numbers are important. It’s always three sons and the youngest is the smartest. There may be seven princesses but […]
Split Worlds Series by Emma Newman – Review of the First Three Books
Spoiler Warning! I’m reviewing the first three books of the Split Worlds series. Consequently, when describing the plot of book three, it’s darn near impossible not to say things that are spoilers for book one, but I have minimized them as best I can while still talking about the books sensibly. If you are extremely […]
Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner
What songs do you sing to them in Elfland? There, where all songs are true, and all stories history… I have seen lovers walking in those glades, with gentle hands and shining faces, their feet light upon the grass, where little flowers shone in the shadows as though the lovers trod the starry firmament. And […]
Rags & Bones – New Twists on Timeless Tales edited by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt
This is a humble little book, appearance-wise, but it holds a lot of wonder. The list of contributors to this anthology are just the start of it, many of them being notable simply because of the length of their writing careers, not just because of the New York Times Bestseller statuses. I originally picked this […]
