The Raven and the Reindeer is Ursual Vernon’s (under her ‘grown-up book author’ pen-name of T. Kingfisher) retelling of The Snow Queen. It’s fantastic, bloody, and dark without loosing the magic that is fairy tales. Vernon has a kind of no-nonsense, logic based method to her storytelling that appeals strongly to me. She also manages to incorporate animals in a way that makes perfect sense for those animal types, her raven feels very raven-y and her reindeer are very reindeer-y, yet still makes them unique […]
A Practical Heroine in a Fairy Tale Wedding
Ursula Vernon writes extremely practical heroines, they simply don’t have time for nonsense when there is danger around. It makes for some extremely humorous situations, and very good story telling. Here, under the pen name T. Kingfisher, she creates a fairytale and gives us the very practical miller’s daughter Rhea as our protagonist. Rhea, is as I said a miller’s daughter, so when a lord asks for her hand in marriage there is very little she or her family can do to deny him. It […]