Pentapod reviewed Snow White, Blood Red by Ellen Datlow
Review of 'Snow White, Blood Red' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This is a very dark, definitely not for children collection of 20 fairy tale retellings. I've always loved fairy tales and enjoyed many retold versions of them (Robin McKinley and Jane Yolen have some outstanding ones in particular). So this book should have been a delight, but oddly it took me over a month to get through it. Some of the stories were excellent - I'd read the Gaiman story before elsewhere, but there was a new Snow Queen version by Patricia McKillip that was great, and Sound, Like Angels Singing by Leonard Rysdyk was good though dark. Overall though the tone was very grim, as if the editors were trying to compile a horror-fairy tale anthology. And yes, original fairy tales were often quite violent and grim and nothing like the Disneyfied versions kids get read these days, but nonetheless, this collection seemed intentionally skewed towards dark and disturbing …
This is a very dark, definitely not for children collection of 20 fairy tale retellings. I've always loved fairy tales and enjoyed many retold versions of them (Robin McKinley and Jane Yolen have some outstanding ones in particular). So this book should have been a delight, but oddly it took me over a month to get through it. Some of the stories were excellent - I'd read the Gaiman story before elsewhere, but there was a new Snow Queen version by Patricia McKillip that was great, and Sound, Like Angels Singing by Leonard Rysdyk was good though dark. Overall though the tone was very grim, as if the editors were trying to compile a horror-fairy tale anthology. And yes, original fairy tales were often quite violent and grim and nothing like the Disneyfied versions kids get read these days, but nonetheless, this collection seemed intentionally skewed towards dark and disturbing versions. There were several mentions of pedophilia, there were several instances of rape, there was a lot of blood and murder and general violence. I feel as if either the editors were mistaking grim and nasty for adult, or as if the book was mis-described and should have explicitly been described as a horror anthology. So, you may or may not enjoy this depending on what you're in the mood for, you have been warned.
