Between binge watching the first two seasons of Once Upon A Time and being stuck in the children's room at the library every Thursday morning for story time, it was only a matter of time before I succumbed to the middle grade retelling of fairy tales books with their tempting covers. This past Thursday, I gave in and picked up this book. I have not yet read Ella Enchanted, but after reading this book I will remedy that this summer.

 

Fairest is a retelling of the Snow White fairy tale, but with more than enough differences to make the story its own world. I liked Prince Ijori (love interest, but it was a slow understated love story) and Aza (our heroine) and her family. There were many fantastical elements, but the story was rooted, so there was no WTF moments. The story was based on Aza's decisions and actions, rather than a series of obstacles for her to be saved from - Aza was her own rescuer (and that of the kingdom, so go girl!). The Gnomes were great as well, and used appropriately throughout the story to info dump without it seeming as if they were info dumping.

 

I took one and half stars off the rating because our "villain" (dude in the mirror) did not get much page time until the climax of the story and he was not punished....just disappeared after being defeated by Aza. The villainess, Queen Ivi, was not punished either; rather the King (her hubby) forgave her and then exiled her and himself to let Prince and Aza rule the kingdom. After all the evil things she did at court and personally to Aza, this was a let down. The King and Queen's relationship also disgusted me; he was 41 years old and served as king for the last 17 years, she was 19 and not in any way mature enough to handle life at the court. The lack of punishment for almost restarting a civil war/rebellion and leaving drought victims to fend for themselves irked me.

 

I really like what Ms. Levine does to the story of Snow White and want to read more of her versions of fairy tales. Plus, this random library pick gave me another category filler for the pop sugar reading challenge. 3.5 stars.

Die, Snow White! Die, Damn You! is a retelling of the Snow White story, with elements from a few other stories, such as “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and even “Aladdin.” I really enjoyed Yuri Rasovsky's Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls, and so I was looking forward to listening to this. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me at all.

This was a full-cast production, almost like a play, but with very little in the way of sound effects. The voice acting was fairly good, probably one of the best things about this audiobook. I'd likely have enjoyed it even more if Rasovsky had either refrained from including German words and phrases or if more of the cast had been able to pronounce those words and phrases without mangling them. Despite using the English version of Snow White's name in the title of the audiobook, Rasovsky named her Schneewittchen in the production. Everyone pronounced it as Shnee (rhymes with knee) vitshen, even the people who could pronounce the other German words just fine (maybe they were aiming for production-wide consistency?). It grated on my nerves a little.

The way the various story elements were blended together was pretty nice (although the Goldilocks reference was completely unnecessary), and the production even made use of some of the less popular aspects of the Snow White story, such as the stepmother eating the huntsman's evidence that he killed Snow White.

However, the humor almost never worked for me. It was generally very sexual. The new duchess is going to have to have her virginity inspected by a bunch of old guys! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, I wonder how they're going to do that? The first monster Schneewittchen encounters in the forest tells her he won't eat her because he only eats good wives (and so he's always starving, haha), but then chooses to attack her in another way...by raping her. I guess? She was so bored by the experience that I didn't even realize at first what had happened.

During one of her attempts to kill Schneewittchen, the evil stepmother pretended to be a lamp seller and used a gratingly awful Chinese accent. Then there was the ending. I actually gasped when I realized what the big twist was going to be that would allow everyone to have their “happy ending.” A great big spoiler warning here:

Rumpelstiltskin arranges things so it looks like the evil stepmother has finally managed to kill Schneewittchen. Previously, he hid Schneewittchen at the gingerbread house, where she began to gobble up everything in sight. When the stepmother asked the mirror who the fairest of them all was, it told her that she was...because Schneewittchen had eaten herself into a 200-lb. weight gain. But not to worry, Schneewittchen still got the sex she wanted, because fat is beautiful in the Ottoman Empire. Rumpelstiltskin just arranged to have her marry someone there.

(spoiler show)

So this was mostly a disappointment.

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

 

This was a very sweet story. The characters were all great and the Lonely Ones were a great different choice for the dwarves. I also loved the ending:)

Read my reviews HERE.
The basic storyline is quite the same. The King, Snow White, her evil stepmother, the evil queen’s magic mirror, a huntsman after Snow’s and the dwarves- altogether will give a very familiar environment in a very unfamiliar way. Along with the traditional concept of magic and supernatural in the story, author Tracy Lynn provides some more fantasy elements on her own that give the story a wonderful shape. The evil queen’s motif to kill Snow is different; instead of seven dwarves we have seven street thieves. The queen’s plot against Snow is bit different than the actual one also. The plot, the characters, the storyline, the diction- everything together makes Snow a wonderful read.
Now, as for the cons, I found the story to be irregular at times. Whether it was the story itself or the author, the story seemed to have lost its pace. But I could overlook that because of my overall interest in the book. If you are a reader who wants retellings to follow the exact same storyline as the actual tale, then I suggest don’t read it, it’s not for you and you’ll be disappointed. But if you are like me and love to read retellings that actually are ‘retellings’ that you should not miss this book.

Retellings. One word that’ll get me hyped up to read a book. I was really excited to get a chance to find a book that would create a new twist to the classic Snow White story. It was just sad that I didn’t like this book.The beginning was actually interesting, but as the story progressed, I felt that there was a clash between different aspects that this book has provided and just left me more confused as I flipped through the pages. For example, this was supposed to be placed in the Victorian era, but the name of the protagonist was a tad too 21st century-ish, now that just blew away a bit of the cultural-feel of this book. Not to mention the advancement in science that the author also included, it was very creative but also a bit too early for its time. It’s also kind of hard to picture out how the devices looked like so I really couldn’t relate to what the author has creating.Another thing that I questioned was the “dwarves” that were remade into something else. This was supposed to be a retelling of Snow White AND the Seven Dwarves. The creation of the “Lonely Ones” was actually good and intriguing. But why stop with just five of them? Why not create 7 all in all if you’ve already done five? I also kept wondering why all of a sudden there’s this character that sprouts about near the end of the book to help wake up Snow. I’m referring to the Clockwork Man. On my opinion, if you want to create a character that would be of use by the time the book reaches its climax, why wasn’t there anything about that character in the first place? Just a bit of trivia or whatever to give the reader a feed on someone that would be deemed necessary even for just a while. Not something that would end up appearing out of nowhere just to get the story going to where it’s supposed to go. It was like he just happened to be conveniently there at the right place at the right time? Is that what that was supposed to be?I really felt that this book had so much potential, with more research and editing it would have been an amazing story.For more of my reviews, please visit my blog: The Blair Book Project @ www.theblairbookproject.blogspot.com