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allyjs's review
2.0
There are some strong stories in this collection: the best ones being "Fair Vasyl" and "You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens." The rest vary in quality, a couple I ended up abandoning halfway for the next story in the collection.
I think that if you're going to do a fairy tale retelling, you really need to do something new with the story. A straight retelling with a steampunk coating doesn't do much for me. Some of the stories embraced the idea of finding ways to make steampunk work with the fairy tales. Others seemed to have a few gears thrown in just to meet the requirement.
It's worth checking out for the handful of solid stories but the good parts are much stronger than the collection as a whole.
I think that if you're going to do a fairy tale retelling, you really need to do something new with the story. A straight retelling with a steampunk coating doesn't do much for me. Some of the stories embraced the idea of finding ways to make steampunk work with the fairy tales. Others seemed to have a few gears thrown in just to meet the requirement.
It's worth checking out for the handful of solid stories but the good parts are much stronger than the collection as a whole.
jason_pym's review
3.0
A nice idea (using fairy tales as inspiration for steampunk stories) and very entertaining.
I did have a problem with one story, by Gregory Nicoll, which used Comanche Indians as lazy shorthand for bad guys. Not to say American Indians shouldn't ever be the antagonists - the Apaches in St Agnes' Stand by Thomas Eidson make the book a terrifying, white-knuckle page turner and still read like human beings. But I'd heard that a pit fall for the Steampunk genre is that writers can adopt a 19th century colonial attitude, and this is the first time I'd seen it.
I did have a problem with one story, by Gregory Nicoll, which used Comanche Indians as lazy shorthand for bad guys. Not to say American Indians shouldn't ever be the antagonists - the Apaches in St Agnes' Stand by Thomas Eidson make the book a terrifying, white-knuckle page turner and still read like human beings. But I'd heard that a pit fall for the Steampunk genre is that writers can adopt a 19th century colonial attitude, and this is the first time I'd seen it.
jwsg's review against another edition
2.0
Many familiar tales here but these weren’t my favourite versions of the stories
barium_squirrel's review
2.0
I would have given it one star, but The Hollow Hounds; The Mechanical Wings; and, to a lesser extent, Fair Vasyl were actually good stories (and based on some of my favorite fairy tales). Most of the stories were predictable, and poorly thought out. Most were somewhat racist, many did not actually have anything to do with clockwork, a couple were not actually retellings of the fairy tales that "inspired" them, and one featured the main character lusting after and bathing nude with a girl who is cannoncally 14. Gross. I do not recommend this book
jasmiinaf's review
3.0
Not as great as I thought this would be but I found some new interesting authors. My favourite story was Fair Vasyl from Steven Piziks. I should really try to find more steampunk books.
shane_tiernan's review
4.0
I think this anthology is definitely worth a read, more good than bad. With anthologies I usually just post my notes from each story (and my rating on a 10-point scale) and they usually have spoilers to remind me of what he story was about. So beware: SPOILERS
K.W. Jeter - La Valse (7.0) Rich people are a-holes and they die horribly in the clockwork dance machine - just like they should.
Jay Lake - You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens (7.0) Liked the writing, setting and characters but the ending wasn't really a surprise. Also not sure why everyone in the castle fell asleep instead of just her.
Kat Richardsons - The Hollow Hounds (7.5) This was fun with all the mechanical contraptions. I still don't understand where the music box originally came from. Liked the period and the scar where he had to wind himself up.
Paul Di Filippo - The King of the Golden Mountain (8.0) Great writing, cool idea. Invention puts souls into other bodies. Takes over Ulysses Grant to become president.
G.K. Hayes - The Clockwork Suit (6.0) Good story but the ending is pretty lame. No big surprise and not much closure.
Gregory Nicoll - The Steampiper, the Stovepiper, and the Pied Piper of New Hamelin, Texas (6.5) This works as a pulpy adventure story but the ending is kind of disturbing just to make a joke. The girl needed to be older.
Pip Ballantine - The Mechanical Wings (8.0) Cool floating cities, "countries" named after birds, cool magic/clockwork mix. Very fairy tale feel but not too lite.
Nancy A. Collins - Mose and the Automatic Fireman (7.0) Very cool setting. He's basically a superhero and a legend. Fun.
Steven Harper - Fair Vasyl (6.0) Not bad but seemed kinda light. Steampunk elements seemed kinda forced. Broom was too powerful solved all problems.
K.W. Jeter - La Valse (7.0) Rich people are a-holes and they die horribly in the clockwork dance machine - just like they should.
Jay Lake - You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens (7.0) Liked the writing, setting and characters but the ending wasn't really a surprise. Also not sure why everyone in the castle fell asleep instead of just her.
Kat Richardsons - The Hollow Hounds (7.5) This was fun with all the mechanical contraptions. I still don't understand where the music box originally came from. Liked the period and the scar where he had to wind himself up.
Paul Di Filippo - The King of the Golden Mountain (8.0) Great writing, cool idea. Invention puts souls into other bodies. Takes over Ulysses Grant to become president.
G.K. Hayes - The Clockwork Suit (6.0) Good story but the ending is pretty lame. No big surprise and not much closure.
Gregory Nicoll - The Steampiper, the Stovepiper, and the Pied Piper of New Hamelin, Texas (6.5) This works as a pulpy adventure story but the ending is kind of disturbing just to make a joke. The girl needed to be older.
Pip Ballantine - The Mechanical Wings (8.0) Cool floating cities, "countries" named after birds, cool magic/clockwork mix. Very fairy tale feel but not too lite.
Nancy A. Collins - Mose and the Automatic Fireman (7.0) Very cool setting. He's basically a superhero and a legend. Fun.
Steven Harper - Fair Vasyl (6.0) Not bad but seemed kinda light. Steampunk elements seemed kinda forced. Broom was too powerful solved all problems.
telerit's review
3.0
Two of the stories, "Fair Vasyl" and "Mechanical Wings" made this book worthwhile; the other stories seemed weak to me.
marimoose's review
3.0
Full review here
The book is clearly reimagined fairy tales with the steampunk elements thrown in. And sometimes that surprised me at how well these two things melded together. Some of the stories did stick out, others made me want to read the fairy tales they were based off of, because it was difficult having to follow otherwise.
The standouts (at least, for me):
“La Valse” by K.W. Jeter was a gruesome way to open a book on fairy tales and steampunk, but I find this highly appropriate, considering how dark the old fairy tales could be. It took me a bit longer to get into this, however, because I wasn’t sure what the heck was going on the first time around (all that steampunky terminology, I tell ya!). That said, I kind of did find the punishments at the end were more warranted than not.
“Fair Vasyl” by Steven Harper was, hands down, my favorite in the collection. It was certainly a gender-bending version of “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” and Harper just didn’t take the tale and go with it, he embellished it to flesh the characters out. Also, I love the mechanical cat. And Baba Yaga’s mechanical home. Oh, and Baba Yaga herself was practically fantabulously witchy. Yes.
“You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens” by Jay Lake wasn’t so much a retelling of the events of “Sleeping Beauty,” but more of a background intro to the characters involved and the lead-up to what could be if the Sleeping Beauty fell in love with an automaton instead. I liked the little points of view, from the faeries to the prince, to the king and queen. I’m not sure if this counts as a “short” story, because I felt like it could have been made into a novel in order to tell the entire thing of it. Still, I liked it enough.
“The Clockwork Suit” by G.K. Hayes was based off of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” so I wasn’t sure how this was going to go about, considering the fairy tale itself was simply straightforward. I liked the turn-around here, showing not the tinker conman and king’s conversations, but what was happening in the background that led up to the emperor wearing his birthday suit. As grim as the story had been, the end made me chuckle somewhat.
“The Mechanical Wings” by Pip Ballantine wraps the anthology up with what I thought was a fantastic derivation of “The Wild Swans”. I’d been struggling through a derivation of this in Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest (which I swear I will end up finishing…eventually), so a shortened, steampunk retelling was something welcome in my book. I loved that this was taking place in floating cities. And that there was still that hint of magic and folklore in there (not that the other stories didn’t…Ballantine’s just had it engraved so well in her story in any case). So, yeah, this is probably my second favorite of the collection.
All in all, I think the book itself was worth a read, if not for the sake of steampunk and fairy tales, then for the fabulous authors above.
The book is clearly reimagined fairy tales with the steampunk elements thrown in. And sometimes that surprised me at how well these two things melded together. Some of the stories did stick out, others made me want to read the fairy tales they were based off of, because it was difficult having to follow otherwise.
The standouts (at least, for me):
“La Valse” by K.W. Jeter was a gruesome way to open a book on fairy tales and steampunk, but I find this highly appropriate, considering how dark the old fairy tales could be. It took me a bit longer to get into this, however, because I wasn’t sure what the heck was going on the first time around (all that steampunky terminology, I tell ya!). That said, I kind of did find the punishments at the end were more warranted than not.
“Fair Vasyl” by Steven Harper was, hands down, my favorite in the collection. It was certainly a gender-bending version of “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” and Harper just didn’t take the tale and go with it, he embellished it to flesh the characters out. Also, I love the mechanical cat. And Baba Yaga’s mechanical home. Oh, and Baba Yaga herself was practically fantabulously witchy. Yes.
“You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens” by Jay Lake wasn’t so much a retelling of the events of “Sleeping Beauty,” but more of a background intro to the characters involved and the lead-up to what could be if the Sleeping Beauty fell in love with an automaton instead. I liked the little points of view, from the faeries to the prince, to the king and queen. I’m not sure if this counts as a “short” story, because I felt like it could have been made into a novel in order to tell the entire thing of it. Still, I liked it enough.
“The Clockwork Suit” by G.K. Hayes was based off of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” so I wasn’t sure how this was going to go about, considering the fairy tale itself was simply straightforward. I liked the turn-around here, showing not the tinker conman and king’s conversations, but what was happening in the background that led up to the emperor wearing his birthday suit. As grim as the story had been, the end made me chuckle somewhat.
“The Mechanical Wings” by Pip Ballantine wraps the anthology up with what I thought was a fantastic derivation of “The Wild Swans”. I’d been struggling through a derivation of this in Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest (which I swear I will end up finishing…eventually), so a shortened, steampunk retelling was something welcome in my book. I loved that this was taking place in floating cities. And that there was still that hint of magic and folklore in there (not that the other stories didn’t…Ballantine’s just had it engraved so well in her story in any case). So, yeah, this is probably my second favorite of the collection.
All in all, I think the book itself was worth a read, if not for the sake of steampunk and fairy tales, then for the fabulous authors above.