I still love fairy tale retellings but honestly I need to
stop getting collections of short story fairy tales like this for one simple
reason: when the stories are so short there’s really nothing all that new that
can be said. It’s different when it’s a full book about one specific story
because it means there’s a chance for the author to create a new background
story, new information about the characters. That’s not really the case with
10-20 page stories.
There were a few segments that were more of an original
idea/story than the others and while some of them were very interesting to read
others were odd. I can’t remember the names of which ones stuck out but there
were a few that just didn’t make sense at all, they were disjointed and kind of
pointless. I understand the struggle of finding a balance between keeping a
short story short and making an actual point because I’ve written some short
stories myself but if you’re going to publish something in a collection I feel
as though you should have to make it feel as though there was a reason for the
story in the first place and some of these didn’t have that.
So out of the dozen or so stories there were maybe four
really original ones, most of which didn’t make sense. The rest were more
traditional and familiar, as though I’d read them before. And one story, the
only one I really remember and enjoyed, was something I had read in a previous
fairy tale collection. It’s called “Necklace of Rubies” and was a retelling of
the story of Blackbeard. I especially loved this one because it was dark and
creepy and it was based on a tale that wasn’t as common as some of the others.
From now on out I probably will not be requesting/reading
fairy tale collections anymore just because, as I said earlier, the stories are
too short to really offer anything new.
