Ash in Queereaders

Apr 28, 2012 Jan rated it really liked it

What a thrill to meet the author, Malinda Lo, at the San Francisco Public Library reading for Lambda Literary Award finalists last week. Ash is a retelling of the Cinderella story with a provocative premise: What if the title character fell in love with a woman, not a man? Regardless of the execution, this book gets a star for the premise alone.

But the execution is quite good. The narration of this Young Adult novel feels a little emotionally distant, but it captures the language of fairy tale w ...more

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Nov 08, 2009 Amy Wilder rated it really liked it

FIRST IMPRESSION:
Lesbian retelling of Cinderella with fairies? SOLD. (And thanks to Kindle I don't have to wait for the paperback.)

REVIEW:
I love fairytales, and I'm gay, so I fell right in step with this one. I was drawn into the story from page one, and by the end I was really only wishing for more, so I guess that's a "really liked it". (I totally wanted it to blow Twilight out of the water, but it's a much quieter story and in the end she falls for the good, decent person not the dangerous on FIRST IMPRESSION:
Lesbian retelling of Cinderella with fairies? SOLD. (And thanks to Kindle I don't have to wait for the paperback.)

REVIEW:
I love fairytales, and I'm gay, so I fell right in step with this one. I was drawn into the story from page one, and by the end I was really only wishing for more, so I guess that's a "really liked it". (I totally wanted it to blow Twilight out of the water, but it's a much quieter story and in the end she falls for the good, decent person not the dangerous one who wants to eat her, which is a much better message for young people, but, let's face it, less exciting.)

I really appreciated how Melinda Lo kept with the spirit of fairy tales while still taking a very fresh and modern perspective. There is the same sad, wistful quality as the original Cinderella - she's an orphan who misses her parents deeply, after all - but Lo adds a slight filter of modern politics to the picture.

Lo sets up a whole dichotomy of male philosophers who do not believe in magic vs. female greenwitches who do - but there is never really any question as to who is right - we're let in from the beginning on the mystical goings-on in the woods at night. Ash is a very sympathetic heroine and she is neither unbearable spunky or pathetically passive, which is nice to see.

Weaving strong female heroes into the fabric of fairytales, Lo has her work cut out for her, but she pulls it off, and deftly so. The fairy-tales with in the fairy-tale that various characters read or tell each other are very much in keeping with the traditional stories but create a backdrop that makes it seem completely natural to have a prominent female leader sitting beside the king at court.

Unlike the original Cinderella, who just needed to be rescued from obscurity and indentured servitude, Ash is actually torn between two worlds and two lives - both a fairy and a huntress want to rescue her. It takes her a very long time to realize her own feelings but this seems fitting for a young adult book, since it often takes a young lesbian a long time to figure things out, too.

If I was impatient with Ash for that, and if I wanted the ending to be drawn out a little longer so that we could see what happens next, that probably speaks more to my longing for an adult version of this story than anything else.

Four stars. ...more

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Jun 03, 2010 Julia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, ya, based-on-folksong-myth, glbtq, fairies-fae-faeries

Please see those stars as four and a half!

Is about a young girl whose mother has died, her father remarries, her stepmother has two daughters, her father dies and her stepmother makes her a servant.

Yes, this is Cinderella, but with some major interesting twists. Ash dances with the Prince at a ball but it’s the King’s Huntress Kaisa who she really wants. And in turn, she is wanted by the fairy Sidhean. Ash is consumed by grief, fed on fairy tales, cloaked in loneliness, solitude and death.

This ...more

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