A review by sbbarnes
Snow: A Retelling of "snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" by Tracy Lynn
3.0
Snow by Tracy Lynn is part of a larger Simon Pulse fairy tale retelling marketing gimmick. This gimmick is basically a series of unconnected fairy tale retellings. I love it. Especially Cameron Dokey's deliciously cheesy entries in it. That said, I don't necessarily think they're good. This one is a good example of that. I read it in about three hours, and I enjoyed reading it a lot, but I have read a lot of fairy tale retellings I enjoyed a lot more.
Snow is originally called Jessica, is the daughter of a Welsh duke, and her stepmother is desperate to have children of her own. So desperate she reaches through what science there is at the time straight through to magic. The science is super vague and weird - a fiddler named Alan is enchanted via a necklace that resonates with his brainwaves, so, science? idk. Jessica is mostly ignored and occasionally taught until she hits puberty and then BAM, rape threat from a visiting count that leads to Jessica being shamed forever and forced to work.
Here, my issue is that this whole sequence of events has very little to do with anything - it would have been neater to just stick with the original notion, that the stepmother is threatened by her and tries to hide her in plain sight. Alan, who is friends with Jessica, realizes that her life is in danger and helps her escape to London, where she joins a group of half-animals called the Lonely Ones. This is, uh, weird-ish. It's not terrible, actually. I was expecting vampires based on the name Lonely Ones, to be honest, but half animals works for me too I guess. She cooks and cleans for them and they become friends and whatnot.
Her stepmother shows up again, and in an interesting and somewhat frequent twist on the original, Snow seeks her out. I find this very believable. Why would she keep letting her stepmother in if she didn't want to on some level? It seems like a natural step to say that she sought out that contact, that she knew the danger, that she wanted the resolution too badly. I think that relationship is the most interesting part of this book, especially because the stepmother doesn't seem to actually hate Snow but rather just be a little weird and deranged. In that sense, the ending, in which the stepmother's spell on Snow bounced back and she lost her own memory, was kind of lame.
issues:
-setting. Allegedly Victorian, but kind of...eh. I think they just went for the steampunk aesthetic and then realized it was supposed to be historical.
-the Clockwork Man sequence is almost a literal deus ex machina. It comes right out of nowhere, solves the major plot issue, and then vanishes again into nothing.
-the magic-science relationship. I am all down for a world in which both exist, but the mixture to me is just kind of muddled here
-Uhhhhhh isn't Raven Snow's half-brother? Because I mean the stepmom may have been making freaky animal babies but uh p sure Snow's dad was still the sperm donor?
Snow is originally called Jessica, is the daughter of a Welsh duke, and her stepmother is desperate to have children of her own. So desperate she reaches through what science there is at the time straight through to magic. The science is super vague and weird - a fiddler named Alan is enchanted via a necklace that resonates with his brainwaves, so, science? idk. Jessica is mostly ignored and occasionally taught until she hits puberty and then BAM, rape threat from a visiting count that leads to Jessica being shamed forever and forced to work.
Here, my issue is that this whole sequence of events has very little to do with anything - it would have been neater to just stick with the original notion, that the stepmother is threatened by her and tries to hide her in plain sight. Alan, who is friends with Jessica, realizes that her life is in danger and helps her escape to London, where she joins a group of half-animals called the Lonely Ones. This is, uh, weird-ish. It's not terrible, actually. I was expecting vampires based on the name Lonely Ones, to be honest, but half animals works for me too I guess. She cooks and cleans for them and they become friends and whatnot.
Her stepmother shows up again, and in an interesting and somewhat frequent twist on the original, Snow seeks her out. I find this very believable. Why would she keep letting her stepmother in if she didn't want to on some level? It seems like a natural step to say that she sought out that contact, that she knew the danger, that she wanted the resolution too badly. I think that relationship is the most interesting part of this book, especially because the stepmother doesn't seem to actually hate Snow but rather just be a little weird and deranged. In that sense, the ending, in which the stepmother's spell on Snow bounced back and she lost her own memory, was kind of lame.
issues:
-setting. Allegedly Victorian, but kind of...eh. I think they just went for the steampunk aesthetic and then realized it was supposed to be historical.
-the Clockwork Man sequence is almost a literal deus ex machina. It comes right out of nowhere, solves the major plot issue, and then vanishes again into nothing.
-the magic-science relationship. I am all down for a world in which both exist, but the mixture to me is just kind of muddled here
-Uhhhhhh isn't Raven Snow's half-brother? Because I mean the stepmom may have been making freaky animal babies but uh p sure Snow's dad was still the sperm donor?