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Title: The Stepsister Scheme
Author: Jim C. Hines
Genre: Fantasy (fairy tale riff)
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: When Cinderella's prince gets kidnapped, it's up to her, with the help of a traumatized-yet-snarky Sleeping Beauty and a slightly ditzy Snow White, to rescue him.
Thoughts: This is a fun little bit of fluff. It's a little snarkier, a little more suggestive, and a little darker than the current typical fairy tale spin, but without significantly undercutting all that much of the original. (Cinderella's wicked stepmother has her eyes pecked out by Cinderella's bird friends, a part Disney left out, but it's off-page.)
The characters are engaging if not engrossing. Hines is well-known in the sf community as an advocate for feminism, and he does a lovely job here of presenting three heroines with different personalities who are comfortable with themselves and have different relationships with their sexuality, without any of them being defined by that. (That said, I felt slightly disappointed that the surprise lesbian seemed just a hair to stereotypical. But she existed, which is nice, I guess.) Actually, nearly all of the characters are female, in a way that doesn't feel forced. It's most likely a very deliberate choice that the Macguffin is saving the enchanted kidnapped prince.
It's not particularly deep or so very ground-breaking. But for a fast adventure, it's well done with a nice spin to make it stand out.
Author: Jim C. Hines
Genre: Fantasy (fairy tale riff)
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: When Cinderella's prince gets kidnapped, it's up to her, with the help of a traumatized-yet-snarky Sleeping Beauty and a slightly ditzy Snow White, to rescue him.
Thoughts: This is a fun little bit of fluff. It's a little snarkier, a little more suggestive, and a little darker than the current typical fairy tale spin, but without significantly undercutting all that much of the original. (Cinderella's wicked stepmother has her eyes pecked out by Cinderella's bird friends, a part Disney left out, but it's off-page.)
The characters are engaging if not engrossing. Hines is well-known in the sf community as an advocate for feminism, and he does a lovely job here of presenting three heroines with different personalities who are comfortable with themselves and have different relationships with their sexuality, without any of them being defined by that. (That said, I felt slightly disappointed that the surprise lesbian seemed just a hair to stereotypical. But she existed, which is nice, I guess.) Actually, nearly all of the characters are female, in a way that doesn't feel forced. It's most likely a very deliberate choice that the Macguffin is saving the enchanted kidnapped prince.
It's not particularly deep or so very ground-breaking. But for a fast adventure, it's well done with a nice spin to make it stand out.
