Tag: Alix E Harrow

Starling House by Alix E Harrow (Speculative Fiction)

Writing: 4.5/5 Plot: 3/5 Characters: 3/5
A haunted house in a dying town (the inaptly named “Eden”). Somehow bound up with snarly Beasts, the house attracts a new Warden to defend itself (and the town?) through the dreamworld whenever the current Warden dies or disappears. And yet somehow Opal — struggling to keep herself and younger brother going long enough to get out of Eden — finds herself attracted to the house and the strange, gaunt, and equally haunted Warden against her better judgement.
I’ve read and loved (5 star reviews) every Harrow book to date, but I admit to being a bit disappointed in this one. Wonderful writing, as always, and characters that I cared about, but the characters were all stereotypes — nicely drawn stereotypes, but stereotypes nonetheless. And the “bad guys” didn’t even have the depth of a decent stereotype. Additionally, the pace was quite slow and I felt like I had to read a lot of words before the story inched forward. I’m sure the extra prose added deeply depicted ambiance, but I grew impatient. It’s got all the feeling of a nice creepy horror story with a good ending, some recovery-style positive self-discovery, and an odd, but compelling, love story along the way.

Just a couple of quotes:
“It’s just that I had to work eight Entire hours with Lacey Matthews, the human equivalent of unsalted butter.“

“Mr. Cole is a nice man, but he doesn’t know what to do with people raised on the underside of the rules, where the world turns dark and lawless, where only the canny and cruel survive.”

“Even if it’s only a foolish old house with ambitions of sentience.”

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on October 31st, 2023

A Mirror Mended by Alex E Harrow (Speculative fiction)

Book two in Harrow’s Fractured Fables series continues the adventures of Zinnia Gray — a self-professed “folklore major with a significant Grimm obsession” — hopping around the multi-verse helping young fairy tale princesses cursing their cruel fates. In the five years she’s been adventuring, she has never managed to escape the Sleeping Beauty narrative, but suddenly a beautiful and cruel face is beckoning to her through a mirror and asking for help. Enter not Snow White, but the Evil Queen, and while she lives up to her Evil reputation (Zinnia calls her “Eva”), things are not at all what they seem.

A good romp through the multiverse with plenty of non-venomous snark, academic folklore overlays, and welcome feminist twists on standard fairy tale princess tropes. Well-written (as always), funny, and great messaging on how to write your own story without succumbing to cultural expectations.

Book one was excellent! Read it while you wait for this book to be published! See review here.

Some great quotes:

“It’s just that they’re so damn happy. I doubt they’ve ever lain awake at night feeling the bounds of their narratives like hot wires pressing into their skin, counting each breath and wondering how many are left, wishing — uselessly, stupidly — they’d been born into a better once upon a time.”

“I’m sure Charm would explain about the psychic weight of repeated motifs and the narrative resonance between worlds if I asked, but I don’t ask…”

“The queen is watching me in a way that reminds me uncomfortably of a lean-boned stray watching a very stupid robin.”

“Am I in some kind of fairy tale mash-up? Is Chris Pine about to pop out and sing Sondheim lyrics in a confused accent?”

“There were plenty of other stories floating around the European countryside at the time — weirder, darker, stranger, sexier stories — but the Grimms weren’t anthropologists. They were nationalists trying to build an orderly, modern house out of the wild bones of folklore.”

“I know how I must sound, what you must think of me, but I only mean power over myself. Power to make my own choices, and arrive at my own ends.”

“Anyway, you’ve created a universe that runs on plot, and a main character who smashes plots like a human wrecking ball. In refusing to complete her narrative arc, she is compromising the integrity of the universe.”

Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on June 14th, 2022.

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E Harrow (Speculative Fiction)

Writing: 4 / 5 Characters: 4.5 / 5 Plot: 4.5 / 5

I had such fun reading this book — clever and funny with plenty of gender benders, surprise twists, and sass. Short, too, at only 128 pages.

Zinnia Gray of Ohio is the Dying Girl. Afflicted with GRM — a malady that always kills before its victims reach 22 — she has become obsessed with all things Sleeping Beauty (a girl with very similar problems). What follows is a funny and piercingly acute adventure through alternative narratives where an array of women try to alter the “crap” storylines they were given.

It’s a brilliant modernization, magnification, and multiplication of Sleeping Beauty stories, all come together with the spare prose and humorous asides that I love in Harrow’s writing. Some of the references to academic takes on folklore and feminism crack me up while simultaneously getting to the point of what is truly important. A favorite line referencing a female character with a sword: “I know they promoted a reductive vision of women’s agency that privileged traditionally male-coded forms of power, but let’s not pretend girls with swords don’t get shit done.”

Great characters that I liked a lot, no BS, plenty of adventure, some cool self-reflection and growth (always enjoyable), and plenty of gender norm challenges that are playful rather than strident.

Harrow is right up there in my must-reads list.

A couple of other fun lines:
“My only friend in this entire backwards-ass pre-Enlightenment world is about to be married off to a sentient cleft chin.”

“We might not be able to fix our bullshit stories, but surely we can be less lonely inside them at the end.”

Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on October 5th, 2021.