At the beginning of the summer, I was looking for a book of fairy tales to read, ideally one that included stories on which no Disney film has been based. I found Gertrude Landa’s Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends, and I was enchanted. This collection is charmingly fanciful, and at times playfully absurd. It is,…
Tag: fairy tales
Once Upon a Future Time
Full of far off worlds and wonders close at home. They’ll span the breadth of space and time. The Kickstarter for Once Upon a Future Time, Vol. 2 has opened! This anthology contains eleven authors and over 400 pages of classic fairy tales retold as science fiction. Among the rest is my own “Jack and…
Through Uncanny Valley
“But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the…
Once Upon A(nother) Time
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away … fairy tales happen. It’s the best place for it, too; anything can happen there. The classic fairy tale opening, like the classic fairy tale ending (happily ever after), is more than form. It is substance, part of what a fairy tale is meant to…
Cover Reveal: Adela’s Curse
A witch and her master capture a young faery and command her to kill their enemy. Adela has no choice but to obey. If she does not, they will force the location of her people’s mountain home from her and kill her. To make matters even worse, the person she is to kill is only…
Review: Cinderella
I’m tempted to begin this review the way they used to introduce famous people on TV: “My guest tonight needs no introduction …” This line has received its share of ribbing, being an introduction that declares itself pointless, but in fairness, you always need an introduction. Even for people everybody already knows about. Like Cinderella….
Prism Tour Review: The Cinderella Theorem
A themed book tour through Prism Book Tours. Lily Sparrow is an atypical teenager: a teenager who thrives on mathematics, who wants everything clear and logical, who thinks all life should work out to a balanced equation. But when she discovers on her fifteenth birthday that her parents have been leading a double-life in a…
A Brief Fairy Tale
This brief fairy tale, originally written for the Prism Book Tour, is based on the story world of The Valley of Decision. One deep night, a mother of Alamir tells her child the story of another night, long, long ago … One more tale? All right, my love; just one. Long ago, the great father…
Prism Tour: Hero
Saturday Woodcutter would publicly declare, and only privately bemoan, that she was the only member of her family who was normal. Not Fey-blessed, not royal or mythic, not practicing magic. And then she broke the world. Hero, written by Alethea Kontis, is the story of Saturday Woodcutter – a young woman who no more knows…
CSFF Blog Tour: Unfashionable Furniture
When I saw that A Cast of Stones – showcased this week in the CSFF blog tour – was listed as adult fantasy, it made me happy. Maybe unduly happy. I was glad for the adult label for the reason that the majority of the speculative books I’ve recently read are labeled YA or younger….