Six-gun Snow White

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Catherynne M. Valente: Six-gun Snow White (2015)

153 pages

English language

Published Sept. 5, 2015

ISBN:
978-1-4814-4472-9
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OCLC Number:
933289066

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4 stars (4 reviews)

A retelling of "Snow White" set in the "gritty gun-slinging west."

Her parents were a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him; her mother's life ended as hers began. Our narrator, born into a world with no place for a half-native, half-white child, is hidden for years by a very wicked stepmother who gifts her with the name Snow White, referring to the pale skin she will never have. Now she's a gunslinger in West that's wilder than any you can evoke....

2 editions

Review of 'Six-Gun Snow White' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

An intriguing mix of classic fairytale and the wild west. This story focuses quite a bit on Snow White's childhood, then sort of skims over her classic flight from the evil stepmother. Much of the story is a sort of dream-like retelling of events, and it never quite stitches them into story. While really I enjoyed what there was, I hesitate to accord a full five stars because I really wanted the same book to be about three times as detailed.

The setting is very intriguing, particularly the suggestions of frontier magic and witchcraft lurking at the corners, but those are seldom drawn into much focus. On one hand, the bits we do see are fascinating, but the story just flowed past them. Snow White spends time in a frontier village of women, for example, and has some really interesting encounters there, but it's only a few dreamlike fragments there …

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Subjects

  • Adaptations
  • Racially mixed people
  • Fantasy fiction
  • Western stories
  • Snow White (Tale)
  • Fiction