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smart_girls_love_trashy_books's review against another edition
3.0
~POTENTIAL SPOILERS~
Yes, I wanted to keep going with short story collections to ease myself back into the groove of reading more regularly again and since I liked the idea behind the first volume and thought it'd get better I decided to give this second volume a try. And did it get better with a new group of authors? Eh? This edition certainly had a greater amount of really good stories compared to the first, but also a lot of the same issues. Some stories were just weird for the sake of being weird, whereas most of them had the same dry tone to them that plagued most of the stories in the first volume.
Like why does an ogre work in community theatre in an otherwise mundane setting? Why was the Frog Prince a random alien? What was up with that gross Cinderella retelling? And again, most were just dull and hard to get through when they really didn't need to be. There's no point in reviewing them all individually because I just summed up the biggest problem with most of them, they were dull, dry, and written in uninteresting styles. Thus, I'll just talk about the ones I had the most thoughts on.
Unlike the first volume, I do think there were more works here that I liked more. Journeybread Recipe and Silver and Gold were as usual very great retellings of Little Red Riding Hood, a story I'm convinced you can't go wrong with. Somnus' Fair Maid was my favorite type of retelling, one set in an entirely historical period, this one being the Regency. Can't Catch Me is a short but great take on the story of The Gingerbread Man from his perspective.
Sweet Bruised Skin was a retelling of The Princess and the Pea which I wanted to like, I enjoyed seeing it from the queen's perspective and explain why she was the way she was, but despite it being one of the longer stories in this collection, I was still left wanting more. Same with The Goose Girl, it had a good twist but I felt like it needed more 'oomph'. The Black Swan, while officially not retelling anything, had enough similarities to Swan Lake for me to make note of it, and it was pretty good as well.
To me, one of the best was The Sawing Boys. 1920's Southern flare, what's not to love? Tattercoats was very sweet. Granny Rumple was also great, going back to what I said earlier about retellings set entirely in our history. Here 'Rumpelstiltskin' is just a Jewish moneylender living in Ukraine who gets defaced by a dumb yet greedy girl. Godson, despite its length, was easily one of the best here. Though the retelling is pretty obvious early on if you know your fairy-tales, that doesn't dampen the experience at all. The modern setting works well to play with the themes of the Brothers Grimms' Godfather Death.
Overall, this collection was much better than the first edition with more stories I liked, hence the higher rating, but it still suffered from the same overarching issue the first one had where most of the stories were overly dry and dull with disengaging styles. This review is not as long as some others purely because I don't need to keep repeating myself. Just because you're writing for adults doesn't mean you have to adopt a clinical, bored tone. Adults deserve better. Maybe the third volume will be the one that starts to understand that.
Yes, I wanted to keep going with short story collections to ease myself back into the groove of reading more regularly again and since I liked the idea behind the first volume and thought it'd get better I decided to give this second volume a try. And did it get better with a new group of authors? Eh? This edition certainly had a greater amount of really good stories compared to the first, but also a lot of the same issues. Some stories were just weird for the sake of being weird, whereas most of them had the same dry tone to them that plagued most of the stories in the first volume.
Like why does an ogre work in community theatre in an otherwise mundane setting? Why was the Frog Prince a random alien? What was up with that gross Cinderella retelling? And again, most were just dull and hard to get through when they really didn't need to be. There's no point in reviewing them all individually because I just summed up the biggest problem with most of them, they were dull, dry, and written in uninteresting styles. Thus, I'll just talk about the ones I had the most thoughts on.
Unlike the first volume, I do think there were more works here that I liked more. Journeybread Recipe and Silver and Gold were as usual very great retellings of Little Red Riding Hood, a story I'm convinced you can't go wrong with. Somnus' Fair Maid was my favorite type of retelling, one set in an entirely historical period, this one being the Regency. Can't Catch Me is a short but great take on the story of The Gingerbread Man from his perspective.
Sweet Bruised Skin was a retelling of The Princess and the Pea which I wanted to like, I enjoyed seeing it from the queen's perspective and explain why she was the way she was, but despite it being one of the longer stories in this collection, I was still left wanting more. Same with The Goose Girl, it had a good twist but I felt like it needed more 'oomph'. The Black Swan, while officially not retelling anything, had enough similarities to Swan Lake for me to make note of it, and it was pretty good as well.
To me, one of the best was The Sawing Boys. 1920's Southern flare, what's not to love? Tattercoats was very sweet. Granny Rumple was also great, going back to what I said earlier about retellings set entirely in our history. Here 'Rumpelstiltskin' is just a Jewish moneylender living in Ukraine who gets defaced by a dumb yet greedy girl. Godson, despite its length, was easily one of the best here. Though the retelling is pretty obvious early on if you know your fairy-tales, that doesn't dampen the experience at all. The modern setting works well to play with the themes of the Brothers Grimms' Godfather Death.
Overall, this collection was much better than the first edition with more stories I liked, hence the higher rating, but it still suffered from the same overarching issue the first one had where most of the stories were overly dry and dull with disengaging styles. This review is not as long as some others purely because I don't need to keep repeating myself. Just because you're writing for adults doesn't mean you have to adopt a clinical, bored tone. Adults deserve better. Maybe the third volume will be the one that starts to understand that.
indecisivesailorscout's review against another edition
4.0
A short story collection is always hard to rate, because naturally I find that some stories are better than others, or have a greater impact on me, and I'll turn back to those ones again in the future but leave others behind. This collection of fable & storybook retellings was no different, but those stories I did love truly stood out from the pack. Big shoutout to my therapist Ashley for recommending this to me to get me out of a particularly bad reading slump. I can't wait to check out the rest of this series to find more soul-bearing retellings of classic stories to fall in love with all over again.
bookshy's review against another edition
3.0
Not as strong as the other books in the series, but it still had some fascinating stories.
aphelia88's review against another edition
4.0
For any reader interested in the origins of fairy tales, this series of retellings is excellent reading! But be warned - the original tales were often very dark; reading these books is setting off into a dark, menacing wood of ominous twisted trees with only your red cape and wits for company.
Overall, this collection was more uneven than the first book [b:Snow White, Blood Red|141024|Snow White, Blood Red|Ellen Datlow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387746798l/141024._SY75_.jpg|135922] but there are some good stories that make up for the weaker entries (please see my review of the first book for a list of all the series titles).
After an informative introduction about the origins of fairy tales by Datlow and Windling, there are 18 stories.
Story Breakdown
5 Star ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 2
4 Star ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5
3 Star ⭐⭐⭐ 2
2 Star ⭐⭐ 3
1 Star ⭐ 6
Highlights: 5 Star Stories
#2 "Stronger Than Time" Patricia C. Wrede (Based on Sleeping Beauty)
The ghost of the Prince guides an elderly woodcutter to rescue his Princess, at long last.
#18 "The Black Swan" Susan Wade (Based on The Black Swan)
Strongest story in the collection
A young country girl in love with her royal cousin is taught courtly manners by an ambitious footman.
4 Star Stories
#1 "Words Like Pale Stones" Nancy Cress (Based on Rumpelstiltskin)
A Fae helps a peasant woman whose mother has lied and claims she can spin straw into gold - but at a great cost.
#9 "The Brown Bear of Norway" Isobel Cole (Based on Scandinavian folktale of same name)
Hard to understand, but interesting.
#11 "Tattercoats" Midori Synder (Based on tale of same name?)
A woman is desperate to reinvigorate her marriage and seduces her husband in disguise.
#16 "Silver and Gold" (Poem) Ellen Steiber (Based on Red Riding Hood)
"Sometimes, I explain,
it's hard to tell the difference
between the ones who love you
and the ones who will eat you alive." (309)
#17 "Sweet Brusing Skin" Storm Constantine (Based on The Princess and The Pea)
A fallen Queen relates her tale of creating a wife for her son with the aid of an alchemist.
Overall, like the first volume, this book has one story I would advise skipping when reading and that is "Ashputtle" by Peter Straub, which is based on a traditional tale of the same name. Since I haven't read the original, I'm not sure how closely this retelling echoes it but it features a very gross concept.
Less impressive than the first book it is still well worth reading and I'm looking forward to reading further in the series! (A kind and generous friend sent me this one, thank you!)
Ends with a list of Recommended Reading, both Fiction and Non-Fiction; there is a short one sentence description of each fiction story.
Overall, this collection was more uneven than the first book [b:Snow White, Blood Red|141024|Snow White, Blood Red|Ellen Datlow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387746798l/141024._SY75_.jpg|135922] but there are some good stories that make up for the weaker entries (please see my review of the first book for a list of all the series titles).
After an informative introduction about the origins of fairy tales by Datlow and Windling, there are 18 stories.
Story Breakdown
5 Star ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 2
4 Star ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5
3 Star ⭐⭐⭐ 2
2 Star ⭐⭐ 3
1 Star ⭐ 6
Highlights: 5 Star Stories
#2 "Stronger Than Time" Patricia C. Wrede (Based on Sleeping Beauty)
The ghost of the Prince guides an elderly woodcutter to rescue his Princess, at long last.
#18 "The Black Swan" Susan Wade (Based on The Black Swan)
Strongest story in the collection
A young country girl in love with her royal cousin is taught courtly manners by an ambitious footman.
4 Star Stories
#1 "Words Like Pale Stones" Nancy Cress (Based on Rumpelstiltskin)
A Fae helps a peasant woman whose mother has lied and claims she can spin straw into gold - but at a great cost.
#9 "The Brown Bear of Norway" Isobel Cole (Based on Scandinavian folktale of same name)
Hard to understand, but interesting.
#11 "Tattercoats" Midori Synder (Based on tale of same name?)
A woman is desperate to reinvigorate her marriage and seduces her husband in disguise.
#16 "Silver and Gold" (Poem) Ellen Steiber (Based on Red Riding Hood)
"Sometimes, I explain,
it's hard to tell the difference
between the ones who love you
and the ones who will eat you alive." (309)
#17 "Sweet Brusing Skin" Storm Constantine (Based on The Princess and The Pea)
A fallen Queen relates her tale of creating a wife for her son with the aid of an alchemist.
Overall, like the first volume, this book has one story I would advise skipping when reading and that is "Ashputtle" by Peter Straub, which is based on a traditional tale of the same name. Since I haven't read the original, I'm not sure how closely this retelling echoes it but it features a very gross concept
Spoiler
a scatological "artist" who is a child killerLess impressive than the first book it is still well worth reading and I'm looking forward to reading further in the series! (A kind and generous friend sent me this one, thank you!)
Ends with a list of Recommended Reading, both Fiction and Non-Fiction; there is a short one sentence description of each fiction story.
emmacatereads's review against another edition
4.0
At first glance yet another collection of edgy fairy tale retellings, but these were far more unique and consistently high-quality than what I've read in the past. It certainly helps that this version contains works by some true heavyweights in the fantasy genre: Jane Yolen, Patricia C. Wrede, and Peter Straub to name a few. The tales they choose to focus on, while occasionally veering towards the traditional (a startling amount of takes on Sleeping beauty), also spread into unfamiliar territory: forgotten English folklore like Tattercoats, tales from the French Blue Fairy book, and little known Grimm stories such as The Juniper Tree.
My favorites were, in no particular order: The Sawing Boys, a hilarious take on a fairy tale I'd never heard before (The Breman Town Musicians) set in the 1920's American South, Godson by Roger Delaney, a clever take on The Godfather Death fairy tale from the Grimm cannon in which Death really likes chess and football and manipulating people to join the medical field, Tattercoats by Midair Snyder, which turns a Cinderella-like story into a tender second-chance romance between a long-married husband and wife, and Sweet Bruising Skin by Storm Constantine which transforms the Princess and the Pea fairytale into a frighting and fascinating story of dark magic and bonding between powerful, manipulative women.
My favorites were, in no particular order: The Sawing Boys, a hilarious take on a fairy tale I'd never heard before (The Breman Town Musicians) set in the 1920's American South, Godson by Roger Delaney, a clever take on The Godfather Death fairy tale from the Grimm cannon in which Death really likes chess and football and manipulating people to join the medical field, Tattercoats by Midair Snyder, which turns a Cinderella-like story into a tender second-chance romance between a long-married husband and wife, and Sweet Bruising Skin by Storm Constantine which transforms the Princess and the Pea fairytale into a frighting and fascinating story of dark magic and bonding between powerful, manipulative women.
enutzman's review against another edition
3.0
I liked several of the stories in this collection, but there were a number of stories I didn't like, too.
aboxthecolourofheartache's review against another edition
3.0
This is more of a 3.98. I liked the overall anthology, but a couple of the included stories were just... definitely written by ~male authors~.
mslaureeslibrary's review against another edition
4.0
This was a good collection of stories that were retellings of fairytales or inspired by fairytales. My two favorites were Tattercoats, Granny Rumple and the Black Swan. Some of the stories were less successful for me, but that is to be expected in an anthology.