Ella, the Slayer

Reread attempt (original reviews to follow) June 2023
DNF - PG 21

Why?

First meeting between Ella and her ‘prince' Seth. She has already wanted him to embrace her before they spoke to each other, thought that their handshake was ‘so warm, it spread up my arm like an escaped fire' but the final I can't take this anymore for me was:

‘“Eleanor,” he murmured my name, as though tasting the syllables on his tongue, which made me stare at his mouth. A shiver ran down my spine as I wished he would whisper my name again.‘

...



Look, I don't like romance books that, first meeting there's this ‘awareness' and they can feel the other person and there's like an immediate ‘I would do them' vibe. I'm sick of it because it seems to happen everywhere, all the time. Even in books that really aren't focused on the romance. So..yeah, I just can't.




Original Review


This book was so much fun, a zombie slaying Cinderella that is still a normal girl. The best thing though for me was the fact that Ella has a best friend that's a girl, with no cattiness involved, and the relationship that builds between Ella and Seth, based on attraction and mutual respect.

Review from my blog: https://athousandworldssite.wordpress.com/
This book is so much fun.

It's a katana wielding Cinderella that spends her time – after serving her ‘wicked step-mother' – slaying the recently returned dead.

So, a lot of people died in the Spanish Flu pandemic, but it wasn't the flu and they didn't stay dead. Instead, they come back as ravening zombies that must bite the living to spread their infection.

In all this, we have Ella, the young daughter of a knight and a servant, that was raised by a doting father to learn to ride, shoot and swordfight as well as a boy. She takes it upon herself to protect her small village the best she can, with a blade, putting the undead to their final final rest.

There are so many things to adore about this book. I love the setting the author chose for it. It's 1919, England, just after the end of World War One. This works so beautifully because for the first time, women went with a force into the workplace. So many men went to war that women were the ones responsible for keeping business and factories and homes running. While Ella takes a more active role, literally fighting to protect her village, it doesn't seem as out of place as it could have at an earlier time.

I'm a huge fan of fairytale retellings. I love the way authors can take something well known – and I doubt there's any fairytale as well known as Cinderella – and make it their own. And the author definitely did that here. While I've never really been a fan of the whole zombie thing, it works so beautifully here because of the dissonance. Who would have ever thought of Cinderella fighting zombies?

Ella herself is a normal girl – just one with a little more skills in fighting than most have and a very protective streak when it comes to her village. What's more, she wants to be a normal girl. She yearns for the normal, happy life she lead before the war, when her father was still whole, before the dead rose again.

I really think that both the main characters, Ella and Seth, – the prince surrogate that's actually a duke – have PTSD. One of the secondary characters is explicitly referred to as having ‘shell shock' which was a term for a type of PTSD before that term was ever coined.

Beyond all that, I think my absolute favorite thing about this book is how Seth accepts Ella fighting alongside him. It's obvious that he respects her and even likes her for her fighting abilities and her brains. He never once tries to keep her from fighting, just offers a shoulder and a hand if things get to be too much. And I love that.