Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

18 reviews

witcheep's review

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adventurous dark funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This novella is a fresh take on fairytale retellings: it not only retells a classic tale of the Sleeping Beauty, but also acknowledges that there already are numerous iterations of the same story. If you are interested in folklore, you'll enjoy the witty commentary on traditional roles of fairytale characters, agency, and other tropes in this novella.

The main character Zinnia has a rare medical condition that makes her life expectancy only 21 years ("the curse"). This has made her relate to the tale of Sleeping Beauty and even get a degree in folklore to dive deeper in all it's iterations. Zinnia's interest in the tale makes her likeness to it explicit.

And maybe the dying girl rules are garbage, and in stead of us trying not to die, we should be trying to live.

On her 21st birthday, a drunken dare has Zinnia prick her finger on a spike of a spindle, and she finds herself transported to another dimension.
Zinnia discovers a multiverse of Sleeping Beauties from every retelling imaginable, from the classics to scifi-Beauties. And together, they agree that sometimes
there are faiths worse than a century of sleep. If the curse is a blessing in disguise, and the curse is taken away from the girl, what other options are there left?
Zinnia is resolved to find those options, and not only for herself.

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risten's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0


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asahome's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring

4.75

TL;DR: A dying girl retells her story by grabbing it by the horns.

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uranaishi's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75


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micaelacccc's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0


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steeped_in_books's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0


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kelisabeth's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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wrensreadingroom's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny fast-paced

5.0


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booksthatburn's review

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It opens by saying in the first few pages: 
“Sleeping Beauty is pretty much the worst fairy tale, any way you slice it. It’s aimless and amoral and chauvinist as shit. It’s the fairy tale that feminist scholars cite when they want to talk about women’s passivity in historical narratives. Even among the other nerds who majored in folklore, Sleeping Beauty is nobody’s favorite. Romantic girls like Beauty and the Beast; vanilla girls like Cinderella; goth girls like Snow White. Only dying girls like Sleeping Beauty.”

The MC is dying of an illness which apparently no one survives past age 22, she's 21 when the book opens.  Her main personality traits are that she's dying, she has a best friend, and she seems simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by Sleeping Beauty as a story.

She oscillates between obsessively talking about how Sleeping Beauty is a garbage fairy tale and how she's dying just like sleeping beauty. It feels like someone turned their rant about how they hate this story into a retelling of it, but forgot to take the literal text of the rant out of the story. Huge sections of it are the MC talking about the flaws in the fairy tale. I wanted something that took the material and transformed it by rearranging it somehow, something that used the critiques to make the author's idea of a different/better story. Instead this book feels like a hate-write of the fairy tale, and I'm not invested enough to finish what would be a hate-read by the end, so I'm stopping.

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fromjuliereads's review against another edition

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dark hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I really enjoyed this! It was a cool spin (pun intended) on the classic fairytale. And I liked that it has rep in it! 
Heads up that there is an HP reference and I am still REELING at the stark opinion on P&P adaptations - mini series is superior, FIGHT ME.

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