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A review by diaryofthebookdragon
Two and Twenty Dark Tales: Dark Retellings of Mother Goose Rhymes by Georgia McBride, Michelle Zink
4.0
Anthologies are like a sampler, an assortment of boxed chocolates. You never know what are you going to get read but you get an opportunity to taste a lot of new flavors authors. I don’t know why I did not read many anthologies before, but I must admit I am getting addicted. I got a feeling 2013 is going to be my anthology-addiction year. :)
Two and Twenty Dark Tales is an anthology of horror and paranormal stories for young adults inspired by Mother Goose Rhymes. Francisco X. Stork said it all in Foreword:
“Who would want to transform innocent nursery rhymes into dark and scary fairy tales? What kind of perverse minds would twist words meant to put us to sleep into colorful and sometimes fun, but nevertheless scary, nightmares?”
Well, as a matter of fact – a lot of authors. 22 of them to be precise. The stories they wrote are not exact retellings since they sometimes just use motives from rhymes as inspiration or main plot elements. Of course there are a couple of stories that are literal retellings, but most of them are not.
If you are not familiar with Mother Goose Rhymes, don’t worry. Before each story there will be a song that was an inspiration. Since I only knew song about Jack & Jill, this was a great help to me. I loved reading these stories and finding out how writers mind ‘click’, how they make the connections and what they will make from a couple of simple rhymes.
I will not do review of each story separately because that will be too long. And since they are all short, it is very hard commenting without spoilers. So I will try to in general comment what to expect.
This anthology is for young adult audience. What does it mean? It means that main characters are coming of age teens and stories usually center at some crucial event in their life. As usual, most of the stories are told from female point of view except “A Pocket Full of Posy” by Pamela van Hylckama Vlieg which has a male main character.
The title of the book tells you to expect dark retellings, so there will be a lot of stories with gothic/dark fantasy or horror elements (although there is one lonely sci-fi dystopian). As for HEA it will happen in 50% of cases. So if you must have your happy ending, you will be disappointed sometimes.
Reading this anthology was fun and interesting adventure. I was not familiar with any of these authors before, although I recognized a lot of the names, but after tasting what are they able to do, I will be definitely reading more of their work. So if you don’t know what next to read, try this book and you will definitely find a couple of new authors that are worth checking out.
I recommend this book to fans of: ya paranormal, ya horror, ya fantasy, retellings or to those who contemplate reading something from these genres.
Disclaimer: I was given a free eBook by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a honest review. This text is also posted on Amazon and my blog.
Two and Twenty Dark Tales is an anthology of horror and paranormal stories for young adults inspired by Mother Goose Rhymes. Francisco X. Stork said it all in Foreword:
“Who would want to transform innocent nursery rhymes into dark and scary fairy tales? What kind of perverse minds would twist words meant to put us to sleep into colorful and sometimes fun, but nevertheless scary, nightmares?”
Well, as a matter of fact – a lot of authors. 22 of them to be precise. The stories they wrote are not exact retellings since they sometimes just use motives from rhymes as inspiration or main plot elements. Of course there are a couple of stories that are literal retellings, but most of them are not.
If you are not familiar with Mother Goose Rhymes, don’t worry. Before each story there will be a song that was an inspiration. Since I only knew song about Jack & Jill, this was a great help to me. I loved reading these stories and finding out how writers mind ‘click’, how they make the connections and what they will make from a couple of simple rhymes.
I will not do review of each story separately because that will be too long. And since they are all short, it is very hard commenting without spoilers. So I will try to in general comment what to expect.
This anthology is for young adult audience. What does it mean? It means that main characters are coming of age teens and stories usually center at some crucial event in their life. As usual, most of the stories are told from female point of view except “A Pocket Full of Posy” by Pamela van Hylckama Vlieg which has a male main character.
The title of the book tells you to expect dark retellings, so there will be a lot of stories with gothic/dark fantasy or horror elements (although there is one lonely sci-fi dystopian). As for HEA it will happen in 50% of cases. So if you must have your happy ending, you will be disappointed sometimes.
Reading this anthology was fun and interesting adventure. I was not familiar with any of these authors before, although I recognized a lot of the names, but after tasting what are they able to do, I will be definitely reading more of their work. So if you don’t know what next to read, try this book and you will definitely find a couple of new authors that are worth checking out.
I recommend this book to fans of: ya paranormal, ya horror, ya fantasy, retellings or to those who contemplate reading something from these genres.
Disclaimer: I was given a free eBook by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a honest review. This text is also posted on Amazon and my blog.