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Cast Long Shadows
Marjeta Petrell.
Replacement bride, shadow of a dead and perfect wife, step-mother to a duke's treasured daughter.
A girl out of her depth, alone and afraid.
Magic runs deep in her veins, stitched in blood ties, embroidered with kindness and pain.
In an unfamiliar court, Marjeta must discover who are her friends and who are enemies; who she can trust before she is accused of witchcraft and executed.
Replacement bride, shadow of a dead and perfect wife, step-mother to a duke's treasured daughter.
A girl out of her depth, alone and afraid.
Magic runs deep in her veins, stitched in blood ties, embroidered with kindness and pain.
In an unfamiliar court, Marjeta must discover who are her friends and who are enemies; who she can trust before she is accused of witchcraft and executed.
- GenresFantasy
402 pages, Paperback
Published May 31, 2022
63 people want to read
About the author
Cat Hellisen
45 books278 followersPresumably a person, occasionally a table.
I write stories.
I write stories.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 28, 2022
Not so much a fairytale retelling, or even a reimagining, as a disarticulation and reassembly in to a seriously darkling exploration of the terrifying webs of enmity and alliance that perpetuate among communities of women. All the characters are fascinating, especially Marjeta as she grows from carefree 'spare' daughter to child bride to 'wicked stepmother'. When she's sent to live in her betrothed's court, there's jeopardy in every tentative friendship she makes, and Hellisen's cleverest details illuminate how when you're alone in a friendless place, a world where whispers are orchestrated against you, even when you've made those friendships you can still never fully trust them. You're constantly alone. The story is redolent with magic too, and the depections of the supernatural aspects of the two competiting (old and new) religions is stunning. Silviana's fever dream is especially unforgettable.
June 1, 2022
An intelligent and atmospheric tale exploring the myth of the evil stepmother. Very impressed by the character work and worldbuilding
Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...
Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...
September 19, 2022
Well, that's another fabulous book by Cat Hellisen.
I have to admit, I go into every Hellisen novel with extremely high expectations and have yet to be disappointed. This evil step-mother retelling ticked almost all the boxes for me: rich world-building including delightful oddities like a pet salamander that lives in the fireplace, complex characters with no clear heroes or villains, gorgeous prose (I learned several new words!), and a slow plot that unfurls exactly as it needs to. This is a book to be savoured.
Why I said almost all the boxes though, and my only minor criticism, is that I do love Cat's stories for their usually queer characters and this book didn't have any explicitly queer characters. A minor gripe that in no way diminished my enjoyment of this book but if you're a fan of Cat's books like Empty Monsters, and the brand new Beggar Mage, Thief Mage you might also miss the usual liberal dash of queerness I've come to love and expect from a Hellisen novel.
I have to admit, I go into every Hellisen novel with extremely high expectations and have yet to be disappointed. This evil step-mother retelling ticked almost all the boxes for me: rich world-building including delightful oddities like a pet salamander that lives in the fireplace, complex characters with no clear heroes or villains, gorgeous prose (I learned several new words!), and a slow plot that unfurls exactly as it needs to. This is a book to be savoured.
Why I said almost all the boxes though, and my only minor criticism, is that I do love Cat's stories for their usually queer characters and this book didn't have any explicitly queer characters. A minor gripe that in no way diminished my enjoyment of this book but if you're a fan of Cat's books like Empty Monsters, and the brand new Beggar Mage, Thief Mage you might also miss the usual liberal dash of queerness I've come to love and expect from a Hellisen novel.
December 14, 2022
Cast Long Shadows is a really interesting proposal from the hands of C.L. Hellisen, a slow-burn novel retelling the myth of the evil stepmother with rich world-building and a compelling story that makes you want another chapter before stopping reading. Despite being originally conceived as a retelling of Snowhite, it is clear how it evolved a lot since the original idea.
In our story, we are going to be following Marjeta, the second daughter of Count Petrell, a really complex character, during a great part of her life. This novel could be perfectly defined as a study of a character who is dealing with several traumatic experiences, and who is forced to grow up surrounded by hostile people. From her eyes, we are going to experiment with these difficult circumstances.
Characters in this novel are really deep, each one of those unique and well-developed, especially those that appear once Marjeta moves to a hostile place, having to substitute her deceased sister (a death she thinks is her fault) as the bride of a powerful Count. It is difficult sometimes to interpret their real intentions, and what are their real goals. The clash between different beliefs and religions is also a central theme, the old idols that Marjeta believes in against Furis.
The pace is quite irregular in this novel, being especially slow in the first quarter, and accelerating hard towards the end, when the book is difficult to put down, as it is really intense. The elements of retelling are recognizable but different enough to show how it is a totally different story where once you understand the roles of the characters, your expectations will be subverted.
This novel is an excellent slow-burn character-based story, where we will see how a confused and young girl has to deal with pain and grief while trying to survive surrounded by hostile people, who just want to keep control over her. Hellisen make an excellent job transmitting the feelings of these characters and making us empathize with them; I really enjoyed my time reading Cast Long Shadows.
In our story, we are going to be following Marjeta, the second daughter of Count Petrell, a really complex character, during a great part of her life. This novel could be perfectly defined as a study of a character who is dealing with several traumatic experiences, and who is forced to grow up surrounded by hostile people. From her eyes, we are going to experiment with these difficult circumstances.
Characters in this novel are really deep, each one of those unique and well-developed, especially those that appear once Marjeta moves to a hostile place, having to substitute her deceased sister (a death she thinks is her fault) as the bride of a powerful Count. It is difficult sometimes to interpret their real intentions, and what are their real goals. The clash between different beliefs and religions is also a central theme, the old idols that Marjeta believes in against Furis.
The pace is quite irregular in this novel, being especially slow in the first quarter, and accelerating hard towards the end, when the book is difficult to put down, as it is really intense. The elements of retelling are recognizable but different enough to show how it is a totally different story where once you understand the roles of the characters, your expectations will be subverted.
This novel is an excellent slow-burn character-based story, where we will see how a confused and young girl has to deal with pain and grief while trying to survive surrounded by hostile people, who just want to keep control over her. Hellisen make an excellent job transmitting the feelings of these characters and making us empathize with them; I really enjoyed my time reading Cast Long Shadows.
January 19, 2024
Cast Long Shadows is a reimagining of Snow White based on the author’s explicit aim to get past the tired ‘trope of the Evil Stepmother’ and reimagine her as ‘a human caught in circumstances she couldn’t quite control.’ Our stepmother is Marjeta Petrell, a duke’s daughter sent to a neighbouring duchy as a replacement for her dead sister to marry the much older duke Calvai and become a new mother to his daughter Silviana. Homesick, with little understanding of court politics and only her lady-in-waiting to guide her, Marjeta soon finds herself facing the antagonism of Calvai’s longterm mistress Lilika, as well as the priest of the new cult of the bull-headed Furis that has been gaining a hold throughout some of the duchies, replacing the bear goddesses of the Three.
The book starts out a little confusingly, with the first three chapters jumping between different viewpoints and timeframes and introducing a lot of characters in quick succession. Characters and world building further seem quite close to those of other popular works of fantasy, which at first makes them feel a touch derivative. The protagonist, Marjeta, is like a cross between Arya Stark and Merida: forever outdone by her beautiful older sister Valerija, she is a girl who is much happier roaming the forests with her dog and bow and arrows than practicing the embroidery and other womanly arts her well-bred mother wants her to excel at.
With Marjeta’s arrival at her new home, however, the storyline settles into a vibrantly dark fairytale whose characters very much take on a life of their own. Rather than following more well-trodden paths towards resolving Marjeta’s story in a way that would ultimately see her get her own way, Hellisen throws their protagonist into a setting in which, the more she tries to navigate the complicated politics in play at Calvai’s castle, the more she ends up feeling out of her depth.
While it is clear from the start that both duchies are heavily gendered societies in which men hold most official power and are generally seen by the women as a constant potential threat to be managed, the way Marjeta comes to realise little by little that the women surrounding her can be just as dangerous is beautifully described. There is no sense of a clear progression from innocent childhood to triumphant adulthood via a troubled coming-of-age period in between. Rather, with her relationships with those around her in constant flux, Marjeta keeps having to redefine what role exactly she is trying to carve out for herself, and the ways in which to achieve this.
With the story being told from three different female points of view — that of Marjeta, her stepdaughter Silviana, and her nemesis Lilika — the focus is predominantly on the activities and perspectives of the women. It is only with the appearance of Calvai’s nephew Devan that we get a subtle hint that the same violence that would grow wild girls into tame, domestic women also affects gender-nonconforming men: Devan doesn’t care for war, he’d rather be out sailing, but he’s been sent to his uncle Calvai’s palace to me made into a ‘man’, which in Calvai’s plans is equivalent to his becoming a war hero.
Intriguingly, both the gender opposition and the politicking of the human characters are echoed in the opposition between the old gods and the new god. Furis is a single, male god replacing a trinity of female bear gods, a man with the head of a domesticated yet powerful animal seeking to supplant a maiden-mother-crone trio of fierce, wild animals. In an inversion of the association of women with the domestic and men with the wild in place at the court, Furis is a barnyard god, a tilled earth god, while the Three are creatures of the forest that think ‘a mouse as important as man, a hart worthy as a hunter.’ As the human protagonists appeal to and seek to influence their gods to protect those they love and defeat their enemies, unbeknownst to them, the gods, likewise, seem to be using their human followers in a bid to vanquish their rival gods.
As Marjeta struggles to figure out herself as well as the word around her — Is she a witch? Is magic real? Are the gods, and if so, which ones? And will they help her? — so, too, do the other characters in the story, ultimately making it impossible to identify any of them as purely ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Locked away from birth, with only grownups to talk to, Silviana is a strange little girl who is at the same time innocent and precocious, ‘neither child nor adult’, with ‘the experience and wisdom of neither’ but, at times, the viciousness of both. Even Lilika, who, without being given insight into her point of view, would be easy to hate, turns out to have motives of her own that are at least as much driven by love and loyalty as by resentment.
In language whose lavishness and originality recalls that of Angela Carter, Hellisen conjures the stuffy, oppressive chambers of the castle just as effectively as the forest where the sun falls ‘in butterfly dapples’, and where Marjeta’s senses come alive. We get to feel Marjeta’s anguish at the death of her beloved dog as acutely as the tension in her first proper meeting with her future husband, or the hallucinatory strangeness of Silviana’s fever dreams. Hellisen’s ability to make unexpected things happen and yet make them feel like they don’t come entirely out of the blue makes the story satisfyingly unpredictable. Some structural issues aside, Cast Long Shadows is a book that is both well-written and intelligent, a book with the power to make its readers think.
This review first appeared in Shoreline of Infinity 32. I am grateful to the publisher for a free review copy.
The book starts out a little confusingly, with the first three chapters jumping between different viewpoints and timeframes and introducing a lot of characters in quick succession. Characters and world building further seem quite close to those of other popular works of fantasy, which at first makes them feel a touch derivative. The protagonist, Marjeta, is like a cross between Arya Stark and Merida: forever outdone by her beautiful older sister Valerija, she is a girl who is much happier roaming the forests with her dog and bow and arrows than practicing the embroidery and other womanly arts her well-bred mother wants her to excel at.
With Marjeta’s arrival at her new home, however, the storyline settles into a vibrantly dark fairytale whose characters very much take on a life of their own. Rather than following more well-trodden paths towards resolving Marjeta’s story in a way that would ultimately see her get her own way, Hellisen throws their protagonist into a setting in which, the more she tries to navigate the complicated politics in play at Calvai’s castle, the more she ends up feeling out of her depth.
While it is clear from the start that both duchies are heavily gendered societies in which men hold most official power and are generally seen by the women as a constant potential threat to be managed, the way Marjeta comes to realise little by little that the women surrounding her can be just as dangerous is beautifully described. There is no sense of a clear progression from innocent childhood to triumphant adulthood via a troubled coming-of-age period in between. Rather, with her relationships with those around her in constant flux, Marjeta keeps having to redefine what role exactly she is trying to carve out for herself, and the ways in which to achieve this.
With the story being told from three different female points of view — that of Marjeta, her stepdaughter Silviana, and her nemesis Lilika — the focus is predominantly on the activities and perspectives of the women. It is only with the appearance of Calvai’s nephew Devan that we get a subtle hint that the same violence that would grow wild girls into tame, domestic women also affects gender-nonconforming men: Devan doesn’t care for war, he’d rather be out sailing, but he’s been sent to his uncle Calvai’s palace to me made into a ‘man’, which in Calvai’s plans is equivalent to his becoming a war hero.
Intriguingly, both the gender opposition and the politicking of the human characters are echoed in the opposition between the old gods and the new god. Furis is a single, male god replacing a trinity of female bear gods, a man with the head of a domesticated yet powerful animal seeking to supplant a maiden-mother-crone trio of fierce, wild animals. In an inversion of the association of women with the domestic and men with the wild in place at the court, Furis is a barnyard god, a tilled earth god, while the Three are creatures of the forest that think ‘a mouse as important as man, a hart worthy as a hunter.’ As the human protagonists appeal to and seek to influence their gods to protect those they love and defeat their enemies, unbeknownst to them, the gods, likewise, seem to be using their human followers in a bid to vanquish their rival gods.
As Marjeta struggles to figure out herself as well as the word around her — Is she a witch? Is magic real? Are the gods, and if so, which ones? And will they help her? — so, too, do the other characters in the story, ultimately making it impossible to identify any of them as purely ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Locked away from birth, with only grownups to talk to, Silviana is a strange little girl who is at the same time innocent and precocious, ‘neither child nor adult’, with ‘the experience and wisdom of neither’ but, at times, the viciousness of both. Even Lilika, who, without being given insight into her point of view, would be easy to hate, turns out to have motives of her own that are at least as much driven by love and loyalty as by resentment.
In language whose lavishness and originality recalls that of Angela Carter, Hellisen conjures the stuffy, oppressive chambers of the castle just as effectively as the forest where the sun falls ‘in butterfly dapples’, and where Marjeta’s senses come alive. We get to feel Marjeta’s anguish at the death of her beloved dog as acutely as the tension in her first proper meeting with her future husband, or the hallucinatory strangeness of Silviana’s fever dreams. Hellisen’s ability to make unexpected things happen and yet make them feel like they don’t come entirely out of the blue makes the story satisfyingly unpredictable. Some structural issues aside, Cast Long Shadows is a book that is both well-written and intelligent, a book with the power to make its readers think.
This review first appeared in Shoreline of Infinity 32. I am grateful to the publisher for a free review copy.
May 22, 2022
I love retellings and I so I was excited to be able to read and review this as part of the Instabooktours.
I was expecting this to be a classic retelling so I was plesantly suprised to find that it simply just alluded to the fact that this was a classic fairytale and was dark and brutal and more believable for the times that the book was set in as opposed to the fluffy fairytale. It was definitely more Brothers Grimm than Disney but this even made the Grimms look fluffy.
I wasn't a massive fan of the pacing as it was a slow burner at the beginning and middle almost too slow and then sped through at the close of the book, which felt rushed and I almost felt like it hadn't ended porperly or given enough detail.
The characters were well developed and I loved some of them especiallu Marjeta, but I spent the whole book being unable to work out who to trust or believe and who was truly eveil - not an easy task with this cast of characters.
I would recommend this book if you like fairytales/retellings and or historical fiction as this mixes both and that element is done very well. I did enjoy the book and would have given it a 4 star rating if the pacing had made it a better read.
I was expecting this to be a classic retelling so I was plesantly suprised to find that it simply just alluded to the fact that this was a classic fairytale and was dark and brutal and more believable for the times that the book was set in as opposed to the fluffy fairytale. It was definitely more Brothers Grimm than Disney but this even made the Grimms look fluffy.
I wasn't a massive fan of the pacing as it was a slow burner at the beginning and middle almost too slow and then sped through at the close of the book, which felt rushed and I almost felt like it hadn't ended porperly or given enough detail.
The characters were well developed and I loved some of them especiallu Marjeta, but I spent the whole book being unable to work out who to trust or believe and who was truly eveil - not an easy task with this cast of characters.
I would recommend this book if you like fairytales/retellings and or historical fiction as this mixes both and that element is done very well. I did enjoy the book and would have given it a 4 star rating if the pacing had made it a better read.
June 7, 2022
3.5 rounded up to 4 for Goodreads. This was a really interesting take on Snow White - it's completely different with only hints towards the classic fairytale. I will say that it is brutal, in a Game of Thrones kind of way, so I was scared to get attached to anyone - but very fitting with the time period and also the story itself.
I enjoyed the cat-and-mouse games between Marjeta and Lilika, wondering who to trust along the way. I couldn't place Lilika though, whether she truly was bad or just mislead and warped along the way. I really liked seeing Marjeta grow up through the story and how her views changed with maturity.
It was slow to start and then seemed to rush through the ending - I feel more time could have been spent on the last section of the book as I found it over too quickly. I still have questions - maybe there's room for a sequel?
Overall, a good story of growing up, lies, and betrayal - mixing fairytales with historical fiction. I'd recommend it and it does pick up once you're further in the story.
*I received a complimentary copy of the book from InstaBookTours and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
I enjoyed the cat-and-mouse games between Marjeta and Lilika, wondering who to trust along the way. I couldn't place Lilika though, whether she truly was bad or just mislead and warped along the way. I really liked seeing Marjeta grow up through the story and how her views changed with maturity.
It was slow to start and then seemed to rush through the ending - I feel more time could have been spent on the last section of the book as I found it over too quickly. I still have questions - maybe there's room for a sequel?
Overall, a good story of growing up, lies, and betrayal - mixing fairytales with historical fiction. I'd recommend it and it does pick up once you're further in the story.
*I received a complimentary copy of the book from InstaBookTours and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
July 12, 2022
‘I was a replacement bride, an unexpected sister. I was in mourning fierce and wrathful, determined to hate this bittergreen country.’
This is a beautiful, haunting retelling of a classic tale, steeped in myth and magic. The writing itself is deeply evocative, with gorgeous imagery throughout. So much in this tale feels otherworldly but also so familiar. It’s a book centred around women and all the different things that can mean - mother, daughter, sister, witch - and it’s a fierce argument against every story of an evil stepmother.
Every character is complex and believable, and they stay with you long after you put the book down. Cat Hellisen will break your heart in about six different ways, but in the end you’ll thank them for it.
This is a beautiful, haunting retelling of a classic tale, steeped in myth and magic. The writing itself is deeply evocative, with gorgeous imagery throughout. So much in this tale feels otherworldly but also so familiar. It’s a book centred around women and all the different things that can mean - mother, daughter, sister, witch - and it’s a fierce argument against every story of an evil stepmother.
Every character is complex and believable, and they stay with you long after you put the book down. Cat Hellisen will break your heart in about six different ways, but in the end you’ll thank them for it.
May 23, 2022
This was a slow burn for me. I liked how the book was split into parts making it easier to read.
I enjoyed the story overall although I did find it hard to follow at times and keeping track of who was who.
If you like a dark magical fantasy in a more classic style of writing then this is definitely one for you to read.
Thank you to @instabooktours for having me on the tour and for my gifted copy of the book.
I enjoyed the story overall although I did find it hard to follow at times and keeping track of who was who.
If you like a dark magical fantasy in a more classic style of writing then this is definitely one for you to read.
Thank you to @instabooktours for having me on the tour and for my gifted copy of the book.
June 6, 2022
I really enjoyed this different retelling on the Fairytale Snow White. It is written from an entirely different perspective and gives new ideas on an old Fairytale.
A book filled with magic and intrigue, and lots of characters to love and hate. Marjeta is a great character and you are taken on her journey from a child to womanhood. She is written and developed really well and enjoyed following her through the story.
I did struggle with the story to begin with as it jumps from present to past and makes its way back to the present. Once you get into the story it's actually a clever way to write the story. Almost like you know the ending at the dtart of the book but not quite so you must read on to find out.
A book filled with magic and intrigue, and lots of characters to love and hate. Marjeta is a great character and you are taken on her journey from a child to womanhood. She is written and developed really well and enjoyed following her through the story.
I did struggle with the story to begin with as it jumps from present to past and makes its way back to the present. Once you get into the story it's actually a clever way to write the story. Almost like you know the ending at the dtart of the book but not quite so you must read on to find out.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews