"Fairy Tales"

Sorry I've not been posting. The day job has been flat-out crazy busy.

I'm not a big fan of fantasy, but I am a Jim Hines (jimhines) fan. This is probably because his previous series, the Goblin Quest books, didn't take themselves too seriously. Well, he's got a new series out, and I managed to finish the first book in that series, The Stepsister Scheme. It's set in the world of "fairy tales."

I put fairy tales in quotes because, even when the Brothers Grimm started writing down these stories, the tales were never intended solely for children. They were folk tales, told to mixed audiences. Not only were they not just kid's stuff, peasant farm children were rather more aware of "the birds and the bees" then modern kids. Animals, after all, have sex where and when the mood strikes. For example, in several versions of "Sleeping Beauty," Beauty was awakened by a prince "gathering the blooms of her maidenhood."

So, in The Stepsister Scheme, Jim plays with those ideas. What he's created is a group of three princesses, Danielle AKA Cinderella, Snow White (with a lengthy Russian name she doesn't like) and a sleeping beauty from an Arabic culture who doesn't sleep. (This is all revealed in Chapter 2, and can be deduced from the cover, so it's not that much of a spoiler.) In Hines' world, Cinderella's stepsisters don't quietly slink away. Besides being much more realistic, this causes the conflict which drives the story.

The Stepsister Scheme is an interesting story, with very believable characters. Now that Jim's graduated from goblins to people,* he's able to create characters that aren't constrained by the archetypes of species. He does a good job at that, and one character's loss of nerve at a critical point is especially noteworthy. Not only are the characters well-written, but there's plenty of action and adventure. I was really quite impressed with The Stepsister Scheme.



* I owe Jim a drink at the next con for that crack. I think I'm up to two.