A review by elerireads
Asexual Fairy Tales by Anna Hopkinson, Elizabeth Hopkinson

adventurous dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Not really sure what this was trying to accomplish to be honest. What it wasn't doing was just retelling well known fairy tales and shoehorning asexuality into them. It seemed to be a disparate selection of myths, fairy tales and stories that had some vague and mostly fairly insulting references or implications of asexuality, and the retelling brought them to the fore a little. So I guess the point was that it's not actually a weird newfangled concept and you can find awareness of ace people's existence deeply embedded into many different cultures etc. But honestly a 4 page essay could have accomplished that much more effectively. 

I didn't particularly enjoy any of the stories and there was nothing special about the writing. Pretty much every single one was filled with problematic clichés and attitudes (e.g. it turned out the reason characters were ace was that they weren't actually human), as well as all the classic misogyny and rapes. There's a reason we aren't that familiar with these 'fairy tales' any more; it's because they're fucking horrible.

This is scraping 2 stars because the writing wasn't terrible, the problematic nature of the original stories isn't strictly the fault of the reteller, and I'm sure there was some noble intention to do with asexual representation behind it even if the execution was so badly bungled I'm not actually sure what that intention was.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings