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A review by jacehan
Cinder the Fireplace Boy: And Other Gayly Grimm Tales by Ana Mardoll
3.0
These stories hew very close in style and content to the original Grimms’ tales, which is fine, as that’s the point, but if you go in expecting something different you may be disappointed.
As such, most of these could just be substituted for the original tale; there’s no extra benefit from knowing the original (although I did read the Wikipedia summary of each one to compare.) What I think I would really like is if I had a full collection of Grimms’ Tales, and then these were just swapped in. Then instead of having the special collection of queer tales, they become the new standard.
One thing that’s maybe an artifact of reading a book of short tales is that often the introductions felt repetitive, especially when Mardoll wanted to indicate that a character was trans in the first paragraph, then move on to a mostly unchanged story. The better stories had more significant changes or handled them more deftly.
Stand-out tales:
The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn Fear
The Three Little Men in the Wood
Sometimes Hansel and Othertimes Gretel
The Fisherman and his Wife
Cinder the Fireplace Boy
Godfather Death
As such, most of these could just be substituted for the original tale; there’s no extra benefit from knowing the original (although I did read the Wikipedia summary of each one to compare.) What I think I would really like is if I had a full collection of Grimms’ Tales, and then these were just swapped in. Then instead of having the special collection of queer tales, they become the new standard.
One thing that’s maybe an artifact of reading a book of short tales is that often the introductions felt repetitive, especially when Mardoll wanted to indicate that a character was trans in the first paragraph, then move on to a mostly unchanged story. The better stories had more significant changes or handled them more deftly.
Stand-out tales:
The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn Fear
The Three Little Men in the Wood
Sometimes Hansel and Othertimes Gretel
The Fisherman and his Wife
Cinder the Fireplace Boy
Godfather Death