This collection is not so much a retelling of old fairy tales as a way of using them as inspiration since the connection is often pretty tenuous and in one case very unclear ('Black as Ink', a story of ennui among the better off classes which has the presence of a swan at one point so might be a swan princess story, but really doesn't come across as a fairy tale at all).

One theme becomes rather repetitive: the "woman as Satan worshipper" trope. I also found the notes on the contents page, which attempt to pin the stories to particular geographical locations and centuries, rather redundant since as most of them come across as being able to be set anywhere and very vaguely as to time.

However, I did like a couple of them more than others: 'Wolfland' was elevated above the rest of the collection in having actual characters as opposed to cardboard archetypes, and 'Beauty', a science fiction story taking Beauty and the Beast as a jumping off point. So on the whole I would rate this at 3 stars. ( )

I've come back to this collection of short stories a couple of times after first reading them in middle school. I've always been an avid reader of fairy tale retellings. My sheltered middle school self was shocked by the depictions of the Black Arts and Satanism that Lee incorporates into each of these retellings, and I remember coming away from it admiring Lee's writing but not what she did to the tales.

After taking note as an adult, however, that each tale is set in a different century, I can see now how Lee has molded these tales into an endless battle between "light" and "dark" spirituality (neither of those descriptors really indicating a good or bad side) that culminates in the cathartic spiritual convergence of the last story, "Beauty." The effect is really quite spellbinding and leads you to read one tale immediately after another.

As with any short story collection, some of these stories struck a chord with me more than others, but I admire Lee's immense creativity and how she structures it. This is a collection not to be missed by fairy tale fans.

*I purchased the new e-book edition of this title (with the horrible witch chick-lit cover) that includes an extra tale, "The Waters of Sorrow." I believe it's a retelling of "Rusalka" or "Giselle" that Lee wrote many years after this collection was published. It's also quite good and I'm glad it was included in this new edition. ( )

Some of the stories are good and a few didn't keep my interest. I loved Wolflans the best. ( )

LMAO, I really liked all of these.

It should probably be renamed "Princesses Behaving Badly by Dabbling in the Dark Arts and Worshiping Satan". ( )

This review and others posted over at my blog.

If you hadn’t already gathered this from the title, this is a collection of fairy tales from Tanith. Many were familiar spins on classic tales, though there were a couple whose source I didn’t recognize. The table of contents does have the country and time period during which each tale is set.

As I usually do with shorts collections, I’m just going to highlight the standouts:

Red as Blood – the title story; this is a spin on Snow White with a mild Biblical touch. It switches up who the “villain” is too.

Thorns – I’m not sure if I really understood this one, but it was an interesting interpretation of Sleeping Beauty. The end left me a little puzzled, but I liked the atmosphere.

When the Clock Strikes – my notes just say “satanic Cinderella with a vengeance” and I’m just going to leave you with that!

The Princess and her Future – this was a creepy and rather grim take on the Frog Prince tale. It definitely didn’t end the way I expected.

Beauty – after getting partway through this, I realized I’ve read it before. I think it’s in more than one collection, or maybe I’ve actually read this entire collection and forgot everything – either is possible! Anyway, this is a sci-fi spin on Beauty and the Beast about aliens who summon humans to come live with them by sending down a rose. I really loved it.

Also, I’d forgotten that Tanith has illustrated a few of her books and this is one of them! ( )

fairy tales, horror,

Retellings of classic fairytales. Lots of inversions of good and evil, twisted religious/mythological allegories, poetic imagery, and deliciously ambiguous gorgeousness. A re-read for me. ( )

I had to hunt this one down after the Cinderella story was included in a college anthology of Children's Lit. The stories are so rich and vivid you can practically taste them. Lee's version of 'The Frog Prince' is particularly remarkable and a little terrifying at the end. Well worse the hassle it took me to get my hands on a copy. ( )

The first Tanith Lee I read, this collection of retold fairytales sparked in me a love for the story turned on its head, the tale told from a different point of view, or the reinterpretation of the familiar. It's also fun, in that way real, gruesome, bloody folk tales are fun. ( )

Godliness is next to more Godliness, apparently. This collection of fairy tale re-imaginings could have been good--a lot of her ideas are excellent and I'd love to see them in the hands of a better writer--but I only got through about half the stories in this collection. And of those six or so, five were varying degrees of allegory, usually of the "wicked person worships SATAN and GOD won't save you then." A little too much in the Christian tradition for me, particularly when the stories were set in distinctly non-Christian eras/places. Any more ham-handed and it would need mittens of bread and mustard. ( )

These are lovely other-worldly fairy tales that give fresh twists to tales already long known. The tones are quiet enough, and the atmospheres generally similar enough, that I wouldn't recommend reading all of these stories straight through. I'd enjoy them most when I read one occasionally, having been away from the book for a while. This would be a five star collection for me, except that at times I wanted a bit more suspense to pull me along, whereas generally these are more like relaxing bedtime stories for adults (NOT for children, for the most part). Regardless, I'd recommend it to fans of re-imagined fairy tales and legends, or for fans of fantasy-based short stories. ( )

Tanith Lee turns these tales around- the heroines are often the bad guys and though the elements of the tale stay the same, the message is often completely different. The tales are often completely different sometimes in ways I didn't like. My favorite of the tales was "Beauty," a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" the futuristic setting was the perfect landscape for the tale's surprise- this tale gets the essence of Lee's most fantastic work. ( )

I'm so in love with Lee's writing, there were numerous phrases that I paused at, savouring. And darkly retold fairy tales are something that I always love, I've had this on my to-read list for years. Glad that I finally got to it, I loved it. Especially the ones that didn't have a happy ending. :) ( )

#15, 2007

I’ve had this book on my shelf for a few years now (it’s the first I’ve completed for my To-Be-Read Challenge), and it’s also the first work I’ve read by Tanith Lee. It’s a book of nine short stories in which Lee takes traditional fairy tales and twists them into new, mostly darker, tales.

By the end, I’ll say that I did enjoy it, although the first couple of stories were dull. Her prose is interesting – very descriptive and full of powerful imagery – but sometimes I felt that prose was wasted on stories which really didn’t go much of anywhere interesting. There was one (the Sleeping Beauty retelling) which left me wondering just what the heck happened, and there was one story whose original I didn’t recognize. (At first, I thought it might have been Aladdin, but on second thought, no).

Those are the negatives. On the plus side, a few of the stories were excellent. My favorites were the Little Red Riding-Hood story (Wolfland), and a science-fiction-y Beauty and the Beast (Beauty). In “Beauty” especially, I found myself engaged with the characters, and hoping for the outcome I wanted. (With many of the earlier stories, I simply didn’t care how they turned out). So, this book has some wonderful moments, although the whole thing isn’t to a consistent standard, IMO. Still, it’s a small volume, and the stories that weren’t great were also not very long. So, I’ll give this 7/10. ( )

*note to self.copy from Al.