the owl and the olive tree

The Stepsister Scheme, by Jim Hines

Thanks to her own strong and kind nature, and the supernatural help of her dead mother, Danielle de Glas (aka Cinderella) is now free of her malicious stepmother and stepsisters. But even as the princess of the realm, Danielle can't put her troubles behind her, as she soon finds out. Her stepsister returns with new and inexplicable magic powers, attempts to kill Danielle, and then kidnaps Prince Armand. Danielle must rescue him...but fortunately she doesn't have to do it alone. She gains the help of the Queen's most trusted aides and "secret service:" Snow (White), a master magician and expert at mirror-magic, and an incorrigible flirt; and Talia (aka Sleeping Beauty), who used her fairy gifts of grace and poise to become an unparalleled martial artist. And Danielle soon learns that her mother's grace has not quite left her yet. But since the rescue will take them into Fairy, it's possible that even these skills won't be enough.

In other words: Disney Princesses crossed with Charlie's Angels.

I've read a lot of fairy tale retellings. I mean, a lot. All of the Windling/Datlow fairy tale anthologies, all of the Fairy Tale series of books that included Yolen's Briar Rose and Brust's The Sun, The Moon and The Stars, Robin MckKinleys' oeuvre, Tanith Lee's fairy tale books, Donna Jo Napoli, and on and on. You'd think this would make me tired of them, but it actually hasn't.* I still love a good fairy tale retelling. And this scratched the itch in a way I enjoyed very much.

* Well, that's not true. I have grown tired of a certain kind of fairy tale retelling that feels, to me, self-consciously ugly, adding nasty things just to make it more Gritty And Real. Thank you, no. But that's not a problem specific to fairy-tale fiction at all.

First off: the characters. The three princesses are different and distinct, without their differences being used to mark one as 'better' than the other. (This is surprisingly uncommon.) Danielle is genuinely kind and good-hearted in a way that's backed with steel: to be honest, the character she reminds me of the most is Tohru from Fruits Basket. She has the same, well, genuine kindness that Tohru has, and the narrative makes it clear that that isn't meant to be a default virtue for a woman. Instead, it's something that Danielle has to work at, and it doesn't make her a pushover (although Talia might not agree); in fact, Danielle may have the most strength of character of any in the group.

Snow is the magic-user of the group, specializing in (what else?) mirror magic. In that sense she's her mother's daughter, since her mother was a powerful enchantress. Snow is the most conventionally beautiful of the three (Danielle and Snow are both also beautiful, but in different ways), and she enjoys being beautiful. She's also a flirt, and she likes men; this is, as in real life, sometimes to her benefit and sometimes to her detriment. Crucially, her prettiness and her flirtyness don't make her stupid: she may in fact be the smartest of the trio, although she's probably the least world-wise.

Talia is the badass, of course. As Sleeping Beauty, in addition to exemplary beauty and a beautiful voice and so on and so forth, she got supernatural grace and poise from her fairy godmothers. And she uses it... to be an elite martial artist beyond compare, pairing her (super)natural ability with lots and lots of training and practice. She's the physical powerhouse of the group, and also the most suspicious and ruthless, a trait that is probably necessary to counterbalance Daniellle's kind heart and Snow's naivete. Talia, in short, could kick your ass.

The book is set in a secondary-fantasy world that borrows more from fairy tale than from mythology or history. The country they live in, where Danielle is princess, is sort of an alternate France (or maybe France/England); the mountainous country Snow hails from is more like Germany/Austria, with dark woods and high mountains; and Talia is from a Middle Eastern analogue. But most of the action of the book takes place in Fairytown, a place that's an amalgam of northwestern European folk and fairy tales. (Not so much mythology. In other words, you'll see variants on hobs and pixies, but not Tuatha de Danaan. This is actually sort of refreshing, as fairy tale retellings that track things back to Celtic mythology are pretty darn common.)

So, let's see. The book is in two of my personal mental book categories: it's a romp (meaning that it's a pretty fast-paced book with good characters and exciting action, more fun than seeeeeeerious), and it's a bathtub book (meaning that it's the kind of thing I'd read at the end of a hard day, and also the kind of thing that I could happily read in one or two sittings). It's not Great Literature but it's not supposed to be: it's a ton of fun, a fantasy adventure that features not one but three strong female characters, all of whom are different.

Why do I keep mentioning that? Because, outside of certain kinds of YA fantasy, it's surprisingly rare. These days you generally do at least get The Girl (not always, but more than you used to), but usually in terms of major characters The Girl is all you get. Books with more than one female protagonist aren't all that common. Books about more than one woman working together and/or being friends (rather than being romantic rivals) are even rarer. The fact that this book features three such characters is just plain awesome, and that overshadows any nitpicks I might have with the book.

( A bit more, spoilery: )

Anyway. Recommended, especially as an airplane or bathtub or bad-day book, and doubly so if you like strong female characters. I bought it on the Kindle, read it on a plane ride, and actually liked it well enough to buy in paper copy so I could lend it to people.

Jhegaala, by Steven Brust

While escaping from his enemies, Vlad Taltos travels to the East, the country of his own people. Though his first priority is avoiding being found by those pursuing him, he also wants to learn more about his mother's family. But his arrival in the town of Burz destabilizes a delicate balance, and leads to a gruesome murder—and solving that murder and getting vengeance soon prove more important to Vlad than staying one step ahead of trouble.

(It's getting to be incredibly hard to summarize these books without being spoileriffic for earlier volumes!)

If you aren't familiar with the Vlad Taltos books, they're essentially... how shall I put this. They're snarky first-person narratives about an assassin in what is, from the outside, an epic fantasy setting. Or to put it another way: they're high fantasy done as noir. I enjoy them tremendously, mostly for the main character, Vlad, the aforesaid snarky assassin, and for his familiar, the equally sarcastic scavenger-lizard Loiosh. They should be read from the beginning (that is, starting with Jhereg) and in publication order rather than internal-chronological order. In fact, given that Brust likes to play games with the narrative, reading them in internal-chronological order is very difficult.

Anyway, Jhegaala. As many others have noted, Jhegaala is interestingly placed: after Issola and Dzur, with questions of what happened to Lady Teldra and what will happen to Vlad fresh in our minds, Brust skips backwards several years, to the time period right after Phoenix, when Vlad first got in serious trouble. (Well, more serious trouble than usual.) At first, I was teeth-gnashingly frustrated by that, but after a couple of chapters I was sufficiently interested in the mystery of the city of Burz to not be too bothered.

And the book is a mystery story, as are many of the Vlad Taltos books. There's the mystery of why Burz is such a peculiar town, the mystery of the brutal murders, the mystery of who has it in for Vlad and why (besides the obvious). But it's also a story of transformation. One thing about the Vlad Taltos books that I hadn't recognized until it was pointed out by Jo Walton at tor.com is that, in each book, Vlad takes on the characteristics of the house the book is named for. (Each of the seventeen Dragaeran houses have certain psychological and social traits which determine both their individual personalities and their political efficacy.) In Yendi, Vlad had to be sneaky; in Dragon, Vlad was a soldier; in Issola, he negotiated. In Taltos, he was an Easterner, in name, in nature, and in behavior. And in Jhegaala, he transforms: now he is a witch, now he is a representative of the Empire, now he is an assassin, now he is a sleuth. As such, this is a book in which we get to see a lot of faces of Vlad.

It's also a book in which we get to see Vlad among his own kind, in contrast to... well, pretty much all the other books, in which he interacts mostly with Dragaerans. But more about that below the cut.

( Spoilers are mild for Jhegaala but book-breaking for the earlier Vlad books. )