fairy tale retellings – Cannonball Read 17

The Language of Thorns

The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo

September 29, 2022 by Classic Leave a Comment

Absolutely fantastic. This was so good I didn’t want it to end. Bardugo does an excellent job with the stories and Kipin’s illustrations evokes the fairy tale setting and characters so well. I may just buy this in hardback for the illustrations alone. These stories are a great blend of retellings as well as something darker that leaks into each story that makes it just as much a cautionary tale as Grimm’s original fairy tales. Here are my ratings for all of the stories, but […]

Dance Like No One is Watching

July 12, 2017 by melanir Leave a Comment

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club is a retelling of Twelve Dancing Princesses set in the 1920s. It is light on magic, or rather has absolutely none, but heavy on feminism and awesomeness. Despite being a fairy tale retelling, I can’t really label this a fantasy novel, so I’m not. I really, really liked it and I loved setting this story of women finding liberation and defying the ‘king’ against the backdrop of the proto-women’s liberation that happened during the 20s. It’s a glorious mashup. Twelve […]

The night is dark and full of terrors

January 5, 2017 by Valtaga Dee 7 Comments

I found this through Scalzi’s big idea series and immediately put it in my library request list. The list of contributing authors is heavily weighted to my recent favourites, not to mention that I always love dark reinterpretations of fairy tales. This was an awesome collection, starting strong and ending great (and the physical book is gorgeous with lovely internal illustrations, I’ll be buying my own copy). There was a good representation of countries as well as a nice mix of modern retellings with more […]

My other theme this month is Fairy Tales

October 28, 2016 by melanir Leave a Comment

Toad Words and Other Stories is a collection of fairy tale retellings by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) most of which were published previously on her blog, though there is at least one new story. I’ve read a couple of the stories when they were on her blog, but there were a number that were new to me. I really enjoy Kingfisher’s approach to fairy tales, where magic may exist but that’s no reason to throw logic out the window. For the most part this book […]

Cinderella with naughty bits!

July 7, 2016 by narfna 5 Comments

It’s becoming quite the habit that I start one of these books before bed and then stay up to ungodly hours finishing it, because I have no self control. But I just wasn’t tired! And I wanted to see what happened! (Okay, so I knew what was going to happen, that’s the whole point of reading romance novels, but you know what I mean.) An Offer From a Gentleman is the third of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton books, and it’s basically a re-telling of Cinderella* (with […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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