Ash

This book has rendered me stupid. I requested it from the library because I was craving fantasty, something light and airy and romantic, and a little mysterious. By the time it came in, I thought the mood had passed, but I was wrong. This was exactly what I needed.I love the use of fairy lore, its a fantastic element to embellish in the Cinderella story. Malinda Lo manages to maintain its danger, while never specifically articulating why. I think that's one of the core elements of a fairy tale, that distance, its what allows them to grow and take on new shapes in our minds. The magic here is unspoken and unruly, beautiful and curious but with doom and destruction laid all over it. This is also what I liked about [b:Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell 14201 Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327945902s/14201.jpg 3921305], and if that book had this kind of romance I would have been much more partial to it.Girl love makes me a little giddy. Maybe its because its so hard to come by in fiction, maybe it has to do with how my attraction to women is far more emotional than my attraction to men. Or maybe its just that the idea of falling in love with this regal huntress, in all her glory gives me the vapors. Seriously, I cannot stop smiling right now, I think my ears are turning red. Stupid, I tell you, I have become stupid.I don't really want to dissect this. Ash had everythign I was looking for. It reminds me of that scene in Legend, when Tim Curry all ripped and painted in red attempts to seduce Mia Sara with a pretty jewels and a dress, which I was obsessed with as a kid and still kind of am and have never been able to properly articulate why. This book just made me happy is all.

Is this the best retelling of Cinderella?

I mean- it might be. This is a beautifully crafted world with a lovely queer cast and a different take on the Fairy Godmother-trope. Ash is a dark fantasy that really reminds you how heartbreaking the tale of Cinderella is- the abuse, the pain, the hopelessness... I started and finished this book in one night, sitting outside, freezing- but not wanting to stop for even a second to go inside.

The cold toes were absolutely worth it.

(Review originally published at Red Adept Reviews.)

Overall: 4 1/2 stars

Plot/Storyline: 4 1/4 stars

This is simply a very rich retelling of Cinderella, with many of the well-known details intact, and a few changes and additions. If you are a fan of the Celtic style of fairy tale/folklore - with fairies as a magical race that humans stumbled across at their own peril - I believe this will be extra pleasing. Ash interacts with the fairy race throughout the story and this adds a level of suspense and danger since it's not all bibbity bobbity boo, and there are stories throughout to remind us of how dangerous these interactions can be.

The love story - Ash and the huntress - is not treated as controversial. In this world, people don't seem to give a thought to it as a forbidden thing, and the treatment is matter of fact. People fall in love and this one girl, Ash, almost without realizing it falls in love with the Royal Huntress. There is more controversy in the class difference between someone who looks and acts like a scullery maid and a person who is part of the royal court. Their relationship is only overtly romantic well into the book, and this aspect is quite G-rated.

(It's worth noting that the author comments on her blog that “in Ash's world, there is no homosexuality or heterosexuality; there is only love. The story is about her falling in love. It's not about her being gay.”)

The novel length is of benefit to the story, allowing Lo to give more time to Ash's profound grief over the loss of her parents, particularly her mother, as well as to show our heroine as a tough character, and to wed this tale, with the most popular tellings of French or German derivation, with the storytelling traditions of the British Isles.

One of my complaints is that the author downplays Ash's dilemma between a life with the fairies and love in the real world. I think it could make her feelings seem shallower than had been intended, and her transition perhaps seemed less than completely explained.

The other complaint is the ending. It ends happily, as it should! However, the resolution was simply too easy, as if the writer couldn't think of a more complex way to get the same result. To say more would be to spoil, but there was definitely some missing conflict.

Characters: 4 1/4 stars

Ash is a likable character, with courage and spirit. Whether or not you'll consider her intelligent is a matter of how you perceive her interactions with the fairy world since pretty much every story she'd read and her mother and everyone who believed in fairies told you they don't play! However, in the beginning she was longing to be with her dead mother and felt she had nothing left for her, and so it makes some sense to me.

I would have liked at least one more scene where we get to see what's in the love interest's heart, but - as is often the case with romantic stories - it's enough that a sympathetic character found love.

Lo made one of the stepsisters awful, but still with a hint of girlish hopes for herself, and one on the brink of likable. The stepmother seemed to have a justification for her actions, or at least she was able to justify it in her own mind. For the most part, I cannot say the secondary characters were fully fleshed out, but fairytales do tend to be told in broad strokes.

Writing style: 4 1/2 stars

Lo does a nice job of making the story feel both traditional and new - honoring folktales and traditions while seamlessly including a message of acceptance. By having it not matter to these people, in Once Upon A Time Land, that a girl's heart is given to another girl, it points out pretty sharply that it's odd that it bothers so many people in this world.

As someone who enjoys fairytales, and folktales, and the reimagining of them, I found the author's choices and treatment of this story to be quite satisfactory.