Ash in readers advisory for all

Oct 26, 2010 karen rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: why-yes-i-ya, and-so-this-is-grad-school

goddamn it, this was my bright shiny hope for gay YA week! this was the one i was banking on to be my best "assigned-but-loved-the-whole-time-i-was-reading-it-and-this-is-why-i-am-paying-for-grad-school-discovery." a lesbian retelling of cinderella?? sign me up! i've already read what robert coover and angela carter have done to improve fairy tales, let's see where this one goes!

and it starts out great - the writing is wonderful; it is very literary and lush and haunting. boy meets boy and keepi goddamn it, this was my bright shiny hope for gay YA week! this was the one i was banking on to be my best "assigned-but-loved-the-whole-time-i-was-reading-it-and-this-is-why-i-am-paying-for-grad-school-discovery." a lesbian retelling of cinderella?? sign me up! i've already read what robert coover and angela carter have done to improve fairy tales, let's see where this one goes!

and it starts out great - the writing is wonderful; it is very literary and lush and haunting. boy meets boy and keeping you a secret were so chatty and conversational - this one required more involvement from the reader, which involvement i have been missing in a big way. it's not a difficult read, but unlike the others, it is not all surface reading; there is depth here that elevates it to the ranks of "litterature," yessss.

but.

fairy tales are generally symbolic stories which mask universal human desires too emotional or frightening to deal with head-on. is this a universal truth, or am i letting my undergrad "psychology of fairy tales" class color my thinking here? let's say we all know this to be so. i simply do not understand this character's motivations, or what leads her on to her fairy tale ending. is it just a matter of "the heart wants what the heart wants", and we don't need to explain what attracts two people to each other? there was no "moment of falling". i never got a sense of character from the huntress; she remained enigmatic. strangely, she was even more enigmatic than ash's fairy-lover, with his intoxicating presence and fancy gifts and willingness to assist ash in all her assignations. am i the only one feeling bad for sidhean?? his was a "forbidden love", too, and he didn't even get any say in the matter. damn curses.

so as a fairy tale, it fails me, psychologically. and as a lesbian awakening novel, it fails me, too. we never see them fall in love, we never understand why. in the world of this novel, the same-gender love is not shocking, it is not taboo - sometimes girls just go with girls. so kudos on that, but this does two things: it removes conflict, except the conflict of "do i go with my awesome fairy lover which is what i have wanted since i was a little girl, or do i go with my awesome huntress woman who is badass and has a great job." two great options, must be nice.

in this world, she is not choosing the love that dares not speak its name over the more traditional lover, in fact, she is choosing the more socially acceptable one. mindboggling.

so but also, it is not developed enough to be that casual. because we never see the love developing, it just sort of seems unconvincing at the end. this is my favorite review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... because this reader obviously didn't see this turn coming, and is confused by its ending, since nothing else suggests that this is where it is going to be going. i don't know if the stars are meant to avoid spoilers (although, really, you don't have to be a master wordsmith) or because it is a naughty naughty word, but it made me laugh. clearly, in the world of teen readership, we are not ready for lesbian lit that does not proclaim itself from the outset, as this other reviewer's surprise seems to indicate: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/.... secret, creep-up-on-you lesbian fiction?? maybe in a few years. biding our time, ladies...

come to my blog! ...more

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Jun 05, 2010 Rian rated it did not like it

Shelves: unfinished

Ugh. I don't know if I'm just approaching this book wrong or what, but I've picked it up and started it three separate times, and each time I put it down before 50 pages. I really wanted to give it a chance, and after reading some rave reviews and finding out it was an LGBTQ version of Cinderella, my interest was piqued. Maybe Lo's writing gets better as the book goes on, but the first chapters drag interminably on, her characters are two dimensional and uninteresting, and the plot is horribly c Ugh. I don't know if I'm just approaching this book wrong or what, but I've picked it up and started it three separate times, and each time I put it down before 50 pages. I really wanted to give it a chance, and after reading some rave reviews and finding out it was an LGBTQ version of Cinderella, my interest was piqued. Maybe Lo's writing gets better as the book goes on, but the first chapters drag interminably on, her characters are two dimensional and uninteresting, and the plot is horribly contrived (yes, obviously, it's a fairly tale and the plot is going to go a certain way; but that doesn't mean it has to plod along like it's only moving towards the next plot point because it's supposed to go that way). The prose itself is weak. Some reviewers find Lo's worldbuilding enchanting, and I will grant that I was intrigued by the world Ash lived in (more than Ash herself); the passages describing how the scholars came to have precedence over the greenwitches was very interesting, and I was hoping there would be more conflict in that arena as time went on. But it wasn't enough to draw me in when I was stuck following the uninteresting Ash around. And then, of course, the interminable walls of text--5 or 6 full length paragraphs to every line of dialogue. Maybe I've just got a short attention span, or have been reading too many Victorian novels, but I can't get behind that ratio.

Ultimately, the failing lies most in Ash herself. She is flat, boring, quiet. She rarely speaks, and when she does, it's to acquiesce to her father or make irrelevant commentary. There were dozens of opportunities for character-developing dialogue that Lo missed, whether because she had to cut out words to meet an editor's word count, or because she did not write them to begin with. In the first fifty pages, when I should have had a fairly accurate idea of what Ash was like (especially for such a slim book), I was left with a vague notion that she was dreamy, quiet, and spineless. She has no goals, no dreams for her life, no desire to grow up or change--and not even a conscious desire to not grow up, it's simply that she has no real ideas for her life in mind at all. She's young, yes, but even at 11 or 12, you might have some grandiose idea of growing up to be Queen or joining the Fairy Hunt or becoming the best greenwitch Rook Hill had ever seen. I felt like I was being constantly told about her, rather than experiencing things right along with her.

Still, I'd be interested to see what Malinda Lo churns out next, as her premise was very interesting and the prose had potential, if she added in more dialogue and less description. If I wanted to read paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of narration, I'd just pick up Tolkien. I'd recommend this book for very young girls--10 or 11, perhaps--with a good attention span (unlike mine, obviously); but if you're looking for an interesting retelling of Cinderella, you might as well just pick up Ella Enchanted. ...more

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Oct 13, 2014 Julie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fairies, lgbtqa, young-adult, fairytales

2.5 stars. I really struggled with the first 25 pages or so, then eventually got into a groove so it went faster, but my enjoyment unfortunately never went much higher than that. I wanted to like this one so much more than I did!

The problem: As my friend Emily has so astutely pointed out, Lo very very accurately mimics the sound & voice of fairytales. This can be a good thing! It reads as genuinely matter-of-factly ethereal, without delving into the occasionally purple prose of Catherynne Valent 2.5 stars. I really struggled with the first 25 pages or so, then eventually got into a groove so it went faster, but my enjoyment unfortunately never went much higher than that. I wanted to like this one so much more than I did!

The problem: As my friend Emily has so astutely pointed out, Lo very very accurately mimics the sound & voice of fairytales. This can be a good thing! It reads as genuinely matter-of-factly ethereal, without delving into the occasionally purple prose of Catherynne Valentine. The problem with that, though, is that most fairytales are short stories or novelettes/novellas at most -- not full novels. Because fairytale characters are flat ciphers at their core, shallow threads of characterisation that exist to move through the plot and little else. Whereas in a novel, I need to get attached to a character, I need to have a good idea of them as a person.

So while reading this, I found myself missing Ella Enchanted as a Cinderella reworking that makes my heart do sympathetic somersaults for the ship. I found myself missing Franny Billingsley's Chime and The Folk Keeper because of how her female protagonists burst right off the page with character and voice and motivations, while I couldn't tell you much about Ash at all. (In fact, I might go reread The Folk Keeper now for a 3rd time...) I even missed Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister because of how it overturned and reworked the fairytale. Hell, I even missed Cinder, because Linh Cinder was a much more proactive, forceful personality than Ash -- who quite literally spends most of the book falling asleep and dreaming.

It also doesn't help that the dialogue is stilted because it's got that affected, unrealistic fairytale feel to it; again, totally fine in a shorter format, but not in a novel.

I was so excited for a F/F Cinderella, but the relationship took way too long to develop, with little payoff at the end -- the arc of the courtship just wasn't very tense or exciting, more of a lifeless plod. The final conclusion re: the fairy ~~godfather~~ is too neat and quick. In fact, the whole book has a lack of conflict beyond Ash's increasingly awful living conditions with her stepmother.

The worldbuilding is interesting, though, and Lo's prose is good. I'd be interested to read something where she doesn't so explicitly mimic the fairytale voice, and I'm happy to have more femmeslash diversity represented (plus I'm especially excited to read Adaptation, because bisexual representation is like spotting a rare unicorn in the wild). I'm more than willing to give Lo continued chances, especially since this is her debut. ...more

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May 26, 2009 Sarah rated it it was ok

Shelves: queerlyphrased, possible-lesrdgrp, young-adult, swords-and-sorcerors, asian-women

Yeah, I feel no need to finish this book. It's fine, I guess. I'm just not in that pre-gay, pre-teen, tortured-teen-angst, i'm-so-into-fairies-and,like,-paranormal-fiction place. I'm maybe halfway through it now (although I admit I skipped ahead to see if it was going to be another obnoxiously angsty coming out book, which it doesn't seem to be, THANK GOD. That's the advantage of fantasy). I'm less put off by the fairy stuff than I thought I would be. It reminds me of that Patricia McKillip(?) b ...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Simon rated it really liked it

Lesbian Cindarella, for YA. Yay!

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Jan 18, 2010 Meagan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ya, fiction, awards, fantasy, tbr-challenge

I would give this 3.5 stars if I could. Malinda Lo got the storyteller's cadence of a fairy tale or folktale just right. This is perfect for crafting a new version of a fairy tale, but I'm not sure it can hold a whole novel together. So while I enjoyed the story and the new take on Cinderella, her great love, and her fairy godmother, I wasn't transported. It was original, but for me it wasn't wholly memorable. I'll remember the story, but the details will fade.

As for the handful of reviews I've ...more

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Sep 13, 2009 NTE rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, books-i-am-too-dumb-for, ya, fairytale-retelling, feminist-in-the-making, fantasy

I really wanted to love this book, but I just didn't. The idea was intriguing, the characters were pretty cool, but I just couldn't get into it. It earns a disappointed shrug from me, but that's probably only because lots of people were telling me how awesome it was, and I expected more than I got. ...more

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