A Spindle Splintered ♦ Alix E. Harrow | Review

A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables, #1) ♦ Alix E. Harrow | Review

In A Spindle Splintered, a delightful modern retelling of Sleeping Beauty, the predestined fates of two girls who are destined to die change as their paths cross.

It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one.

Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.

A Spindle Splintered ♦ Alix E. Harrow

Opinion

One with a chronic illness that will probably not keep her alive until she is 22, and another destined to sleep forever. The parallels here were fantastically chosen.

While I really enjoyed the adventures of the protagonists, I was a little overwhelmed with the nature and explanation of travel into the fairy tales. That just couldn’t convince me.
I also found some of the characters a bit annoying, especially the main character made me roll my eyes more than once. I was really glad that it was only a short story.

But the messages in the story are clear: power to the women, because no princess really had to be saved. They simply took the reins into their own hands and saved themselves.

Conclusion

All in all, it’s a playful mockery of fairy tale clichés, complete with the obligatory happy ending, some tilting of uncomfortable fairy tale concepts, and enough heartwarming elements to make for an enjoyable read.

Fractured Fables – The Series

About Alix E. Harrow

Alix E. Harrow is the NYT-bestselling author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Once and Future Witches, Starling House, and various short fiction, including a duology of retold fairy tales (A Spindle Splintered and A Mirror Mended). Her work has won a Hugo and a British Fantasy Award, and been shortlisted for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, Southern Book Prize, and Goodreads Choice awards.

She's from Kentucky, but now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband and their two semi-feral kids.

Website | Goodreads | Instagram

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