(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)
Prompt: Favorite Fairy Tale or Legend and why.
You'd think with my interests and reading habits that this one would be easy, but I actually had real trouble coming up with something. It's much easier if I include myths in the mix as well, but I also think of those as a different category of things from Fairy Tales and Legends, so I'm not using any of them. (I think it's completely fair if anybody else decides to go that way with their answer, though.)
But while I have issues trying to come up with a favorite fairy tale, I do have a weakness for a well-done fairy tale retelling. And this particular one is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, from the perspective of the hapless fairy who's desperately trying to keep her from awakening and escaping the tower to do horrible things... and has been stuck in the empty castle for centuries in the process.
The book is Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher, and I highly recommend it.
What a surprise! I came to your site fully expecting you to have like six different favourites. LOL.
ReplyDeleteI’ve heard good things about Thornhedge.
I know! But I swear, I looked at that prompt and just drew a complete blank.
DeleteHave you heard of Mercedes Lackey? She does retellings, but with a twist: her stories are set in a land actively shaped by The Tradition, which tries to make people whose lives fit some stereotypes retell stories that USE those stereotypes. Some resist, some go with the flow.
ReplyDeleteI love Mercedes Lackey!
DeleteI love a good retelling. I'll have to give that a read!
ReplyDeleteI think you'll enjoy it, it's really well done.
DeleteI love the current trend of taking the character who we think is bad (like "Wicked" or "Maleficent") and show their backstory. And your suggestion sounds *kind of* like that. Showing that maybe there's more to the story than we think...
ReplyDeleteI loved Eleanor Farjeon's retellings as a kid, then discovered Pamela Dean's as an adult. Never heard of T. Kingfisher but now I'll have to look person up.
ReplyDelete