Beasts and Beauty

Oh, man, this was SO GOOD. 

Soman Chainani is the author of the School for Good and Evil series. I read the first one...all or most, I can't remember...and have the first two sitting on my to read shelf. Reading this is going to make me go get them and read the rest of the series, too. 

So Beasts and Beauty is an anthology of retold fairy tales, which is one of my biggest reading not-one-bit-guilty pleasures. 

The stories he chose are all the big names but the way he retells them is excellent. I'll do a list of them, which will have spoilers. 

RED RIDING HOOD: "On the first day of spring, the wolves eat the prettiest girl." This has the wolves coming into the town and marking the door of the girl they've selected. She's sent out into the woods to be eaten. When it comes RRH's turn, she's surprised because she was an ugly duckling who only more recently turned beautiful. She plots to fight the wolves, arming herself with a knife, and then learns they're shapeshifters who turn into a gang of boys. She is forced to choose which boy/wolf will eat her but then entices him with tales of her younger sister, more beautiful than she, who lives with their grandmother. After sending the wolves the wrong direction, she hurries to her grandmother's and together, they lure and kill the entire wolf pack. But every year, the "wolves" mark the door of another girl. Only this time, the girl is taken to grandmother's house where she'll live happily. And on and on until the grandmother is now the original RRH. I liked this one and the feminist tones, though the scene where the wolves turn to boys was unsettling. I imagine that's what the author was going for, the fear of some sort of gang rape scene.

SNOW WHITE: Black Snow White. Not an unusual take on the story and not a particularly interesting one. Racism is clear throughout and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, like where did the original prince meet his black princess in the first place if there are so few black people Snow White grows up never seeing a single one? I did like Snow killing the queen using the queen's own poison, but the racist prince discovering the dead queen, who the dwarves put in the glass coffin, and wanting her only for the dwarves to...bring Snow White to him? Why would you want Snow to go with the racist who drove you out of his land? (The dwarves are also black.) And why would Snow want to? So she's stuck in the literal retelling of her mother's story, only the dwarves save her from the illness that killed Snow's mother. Snow gets to raise Little Snow White (...really?) properly and she'll grow up strong and loved. I like that part of the ending, but still don't get why Snow went with the racist prince in the first place. 

SLEEPING BEAUTY: Closeted male Sleeping Beauty fed on by vampiric incubus boy. This one was a bit weird. 

RAPUNZEL: Rapunzel stolen away by MALE non-witch. This one's got a bit of weird Daddy issues, though her rejection of the prince was awesome and her escape at the end, while ambiguous, I also liked.  

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK: Jack has a gambling addict dad who likely got killed by the people he owed debts, too. His mom is supposed to come across as abusive but it doesn't read that way when Jack is a lazyass who mooches off her and does nothing to contribute. Jack basically has an old cow as a substitute for his mom but his mom would be loving if he'd just FUCKING DO SOMETHING USEFUL. So when the cow's milk dries up, his mom wants her sold so they can survive. Jack tries to get a job and fails at the only one that would take him, leading him to have to sell the cow. So that's Jack failing Cow Mom, not his mother being the bad guy. A magical woman buys the cow and promises to give her a good home, trading Jack the beans. Jack's mom is mad, as she always is in this story, and the next day, there's the beanstalk. He goes up and finds a man who's married to an ogress. Jack confuses the man for his father at first and then turns him into a new substitute parent. The ogress comes home and falls asleep, so Jack races out with a sack of her gold and a young calf. He totally has a thing for cows. Jack and Mom are happy for a time but when the money runs out, he has to go back up. This time, he actually goes up for the man. The ogress chases them and the falling beanstalk kills both her and Jack's mom, who seriously never did that much wrong. She wasted some of the money like Jack did but that was it. So Jack, the man and the calf live happily ever after. Jack seriously is too obsessed with cows. It's creepy. This was easily the worst story in the book, both because of the cow obsession and the completely unlikeable protagonist. At the end, Jack was willing to get a job to take care of his calf and his random man, but he couldn't do that in the beginning for his Cow Mom and real mom? It makes no sense. 

HANSEL AND GRETEL: Indian Hansel and Gretel. I like this one a lot. Their mother is the best baker in town but because she's a woman, they have to pretend all her stuff was made by her husband. She's eventually thrown out of town blinded because she simply must be a witch. Her husband totally sucks. He marries a bitch that begins the string of child murder attempts. They find their mother's candy house and have a happy ending, killing the greedy stepmother and sending daily reminders of his loss to their asshole father. 

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: Handsome prince gets turned into a beast because he doesn't fall in love with the old fairy that rescued him. This version makes the old fairy look bad, not the prince. You can't force someone to love you so he didn't deserve his punishment. Then we have a Chinese man with three sons who help him run the merchant business and three daughters. The two eldest daughters are vain. The youngest is Mei, who is beauty. But Mei is...not without flaws. She plans to take care of her father until he dies then use the money he's given her over time to live by herself and just read. Dad goes on the usual business trip and needs help from the beast on the way home, takes the rose, promises to send Mei in return. But Mei WANTS to go. Not because she wants to save her father but because her plan is to kill the beast and live in his giant castle with its huge library. The beast woos her by selecting a book each day, which she gives him a review of at dinner. They're getting closer but have an argument over whether Mei cares about looks or not. The beast follows her into the library, where she's on the highest ladder, trying to select her own book when she falls. He catches her but her fall crushes him. She expresses her love but then her father, rich again, brings an army to the castle to rescue her. When Mei rushes back to the library, the beast is no longer there but a healed handsome man. However, Mei mistakes him for one of her father's men and kills him herself. Mei is left alone in the castle, taken care of by the fairies who run it (no enchanted objects here), reading in peace. When she finishes a book, an invisible presence brings her a new one. I like this one a lot, too. Mei isn't like perfect Belle. She's definitely selfish and has to work toward love, not because of the beast's looks but because of who she is. But when it backfires on her, well...I don't think she really regrets the life she ends up with, which is what she wanted all along. 

BLUEBEARD: Bluebeard, who the illustrator definitely made to look like Blackbeard, is adopting boys, not marrying wives. No obvious sexual intentions here but I think the language hints at rapey things. Not with Bluebeard so much as the main character's uncle, who he killed. Pietro survives his Bluebeard experience and returns to the orphanage to adopt all the boys. I liked this. 

CINDERELLA: Set in Spain. The prince falls for a melon seller, only to have his intended wife (he doesn't know she's a witch) turn that girl into a mouse. Mouse ends up with Cinderella, who can understand mice, and the whole thing is the mouse trying to get Cinderella to the ball so she (the mouse) can somehow win her prince back. It's really entertaining. Cinderella is pretty weak-willed at first but she grows a lot. She and the mouse kill the stepmother and stepsisters themselves, but then get hit by the witch and her grandmother. The mouse takes the spell hit and returns to girl form. She's basically loved back to life by Cinderella, while the prince's guards grab the witches. So the prince picks both girls but they prefer each other's company to his and he eventually takes a third. Magdalena the former mouse and Lourdes the former Cinderella leave and have their own adventures. I am really torn on the ending because the vibe is definitely lesbians but no, they're friends. Magdalena gets married and divorced. Lourdes never marries but finds a nice guy and has 3 kids. The two grow old together. So on one hand, it's a bit of a tease because I wanted them to be a couple, but on the other hand, this way it's fulfilling the "friendship is just as important as romance" angle that I love. So I'm disappointed but also happy with the ending, I guess.

LITTLE MERMAID: The sea witch talks to Not Ariel for a long time before finally agreeing to give her legs. But by then, Not Ariel isn't sure she wants them. This is something I could have written. It's every flaw with The Little Mermaid thrown into Not Ariel's face until she finally sees sense. This one also has the best illustration by far. I like a lot of the illustrations, though some are a bit more goofy and cartoony than feels right, but this one is fab. It's just the sea witch's eyes glowing in a black background. Gorgeous. 

RUMPLESTILTSKIN: A more Christian take on the tale where Rumple is the devil. I didn't love it, didn't hate it. It was just there. 

PETER PAN: Set after the events of the book, Peter fetches Wendy for a week every year so she can have adventures with him and play mother to everyone. As she ages, Peter gets mad and she ends up falling for a young pirate. Said pirate then is the one to come see her whenever he can, but she eventually gets married and is pregnant. When she gives birth, the baby is ill and the pirate arrives and says it's because he's supposed to live in Neverland. Yep, it's his kid. So poor Wendy is left behind on earth, having lost the last of her magic giving birth, while the pirate she wishes she could have married lives in Neverland with their son. I liked this one quite a bit, though it's frustrating that the actions of other characters, on Peter's side as well as the pirates, made it so Wendy couldn't just stay in Neverland. Of course, the pirate didn't want to live in the mundane either, which he totally could have tried. 

So big name stories retold in mostly interesting ways. Some gender flipping. Some sexuality changes. But not so much that it feels like the point of the anthology. I highly recommend this one if you love fairy tales like I do.