Spindle Splintered - Alix E.Harrow

Fantasy

Rating: 8/10

If you’ve been a faithful follower of Cracking The Spine, you are undoubtedly aware that I love a reimagining of a classic story, especially fairytales. Fairy tales are steeped in the magical and the mystical and have a logic all their own.

In this tale, our protagonist is fully aware that she is stuck inside a version of Sleeping Beauty.  Which, any way you slice it, is the worst of the fairy tales.  An unconscious woman, unable to fight her own battles, saved by the puff chested prince. While arguably picturesque, she is a hero only to dying girls because, you know, maybe there is hope after all.

Zinnia is a dying girl that refuses to go gently into that good night…instead during an attempt at finding liberation from this foretold tale of woe, sees a vision of other girls.  Other sleeping beauties, trapped in other stories. As the vision comes to a halt, she discovers she has fallen out of her own story and into one that might have a happy ending.

This author writes spectacular characters that push the bounds of the archetypal, not only wanting but deserving more of own their destiny.

For more see my feature…

https://www.crackingthespine.ca/blog/2021/3/4/re-imagine-that

Book Pairing(s): Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, Girls Made Of Snow & Glass by Melissa Bashardost, Beauty In Thorns by Kate Forsyth