Curse of the Thirteenth Fey, Jane Yolen

Curse of the Thirteenth Fey, Jane Yolen
ISBN: 9780399256646
Read November 20, 2013

YA: Sleeping Beauty re-tell from the perspective of the fairy "godmothers" although the sleeper is a fae also...

Weird.  I think that I would have enjoyed it more if I had been allowed to come to the realization that this was a Sleeping Beauty re-telling more gradually and naturally over the course of the story, instead of having it plastered on the cover.

Because to be quite honest, it ISN'T the story of Sleeping Beauty. Unless you accept that the story of Sleeping Beauty that we all know was mangled all out of shape and smushed into a container that didn't quite fit it all, and then dumped out somewhere quite different and mixed up with some extra bits from who-knows-where.

To that end, I have a hard time reviewing this.  Is it a good re-work of Sleeping Beauty?  For me, nope.  It was weird, focused on the fae end of things, didn't really have that mystical fairy-tale feel, and too many of the classic elements were missing or occluded.

Was it a good story of itself?  Actually, yes.  I liked Gorse, I liked the mythology of their strange Appalachian-seeming hippie-fae family, I liked all the sibling interactions, and I really really liked the bits in the dark with the Grey and the Prince.  Those bits strongly reminded me of The Perilous Gard (Elizabeth Marie Pope) which I read a while back.  I really like creepity fae that take advantage of darkness and odd motivations.

So I'm not sure about it.  My suggestion?  Try not to think about classic fairy-tales when you read it, and just enjoy a strange, somewhat nigglingly-familiar story about a clumsy and unlucky 13th child of the fae, and what happened a long time ago, when she was a child.