A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow Series: Fractured Fables #1
Published by Tor (10.5.2021)
Genres: New Adult, Fantasy
Format: Audiobook, 128 pages
Length: 3 hours, 20 minutes
Narrator: Amy Landon
Source: Library
It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one.
Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.
My thoughts
I actually read this book as an ARC before it came out and just….never got around to reviewing it. Oops.
This book is a super fun and creative retelling of Sleeping Beauty, but with some fierce feminist vibes! There’s plenty of subverted tropes and gender roles in this book. Gay princesses, badass princesses, masculine princesses, princesses saving themselves or denying the prince in favor of choosing their own path…oh, and my favorite: waking up a princess with a kiss doesn’t have to be from a dude.
Harrow’s writing is magical and enchanting as always! Zinnia’s voice is sarcastic in a tongue-in-cheek way that I found charming, but it may not work for everyone. She’s got an illness called progressive amyloidosis and could die at any moment, and she’s quite flippant about being a walking dead girl. The characters are unique without feeling inauthentic. Charm was probably my favorite! I feel like the narrator did a great job of bringing this story and its characters to life.
I really enjoyed the world in this book and the possibilities it offered. It’s a multiversal and portal fantasy wrapped into one, and it was cool to see the variations of Sleeping Beauties across the multiverse (I especially loved the space Beauty). I like how they all came together into one badass troupe of Beauties!
Also, it takes place in Ohio, which is pretty cool for me because I live in Ohio ;)
Overall Assessment
Plot: 4/5
Premise: 4.5/5
Writing style: 5/5
Originality: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
World-building: 4/5
Pace: 4.5/5
Feels: 3/5
Narration: 4/5
Cover: 4/5
A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow Series: Fractured Fables #2
Published by Tor (6.14.2022)
Genres: New Adult, Fantasy
Format: Audiobook, 130 pages
Length: 3 hours, 48 minutes
Narrator: Amy Landon
Source: Library
Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty, is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.
Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can't handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White's Evil Queen has found out how her story ends, and she's desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone. Will Zinnia accept the Queen's poisonous request and save them both from the hot-iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?
My thoughts
This book had a little bit of a rough start for me. The tongue-in-cheek narration that I found charming in the first book grated on my nerves this time and I don’t know why. I guess it was just a bit much in the beginning, like it was trying too hard.
Thankfully, it got less obnoxious farther in, and I did end up enjoying the last half. I liked the sapphic romance with the villain being the love interest, it was refreshing! (And the romance was super cute, too!) This one busts through tropes and gender roles just like the first one did. I like that villain was a perspective – sometimes the villain is just as much a victim in the story.
I don’t really know how I felt about the end, though. View Spoiler »
Overall Assessment
Plot: 3.5/5
Premise: 4.5/5
Writing style: 4.5/5
Originality: 4/5
Characters: 3.5/5
World-building: 4/5
Pace: 4/5
Feels: 2.5/5
Narration: 4/5
Cover: 4/5
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