Fairy Tale Bletherings (4) Retellings

Back again guys.

I am sorry if this is me harping on quite a bit but I am really stuck on the reading side of things...still. 

So, there are a whole bunch of Fairy tale re-tellings out there. Some of them are stand alone novels and some of them are in a series. So I thought I would mention a few. Some I have read and some I haven't. 

Robin McKinley has written two re-tellings of  Beauty and the Beast and one of Sleeping Beauty. 

This one is my favourite of her two re-tellings. It is easy to read and follow. 

Now, this one is good also but it is a little more complicated to follow and the language is a bit more...oldie. But there is an interesting twist at the end. 

And this is the re-telling of Sleeping Beauty and I LOVED this one. And it has a great (and I mean GREAT) twist at the end (or I thought so anyway) I would recommend this to anyone. It does seem a little slow and tedious at points but it is well worth the read. 

There is also a series of books published my Simon Pulse called Once Upon a Time... and the list can be found here

The series has everything including Anastasia and Mulan. They are good and aimed towards teens and younger readers I would say. And they have some lovely covers. They aren't overly complicated which makes them gorgeous to look at. 

And then there is the books by Gail Carson Levine. I have only read two of her novels and I found them throughly enjoyable when I was in my early teens. 

 This is a story based on Cinderella. With the interesting twist on the tale that Ella has had a curse of obedience placed on her. But after all...hoe bad could that be? You'll have to read it and find out. 

And Fairest is strongly influenced by Snow White. With mirrors, poisons, apples and near death/death experiences. But of course there is a twist :)

Both of Gail Carson Levine's books are good but the names tend to be a little off putting - for me they were anyway. The human names tend to be normal enough and easy enough to read but the names for the gnomes and other magical creatures are a little strange and I found myself just putting in other names like 'Bill', 'Fred' and 'Jim Bob' because I was too lazy to try and figure out how to get my brain round the actual names. Someone smarter than me could probably manage fine. 

There are also some fairy tale re-tellings by Mercedes Lackey but I haven't read them yet so I can't really recommend them...