A good retelling of fairy stories. Modern in the sense of some of the wording and occasional nods to the intelligence and autonomy of people other than the typical white male protagonist, but nothing anachronistic, no twist endings. Just thoroughly well written stories

Robin McKinley is one of my favourite authors, so I have to confess to being disappointed by this one of her earlier works. I've had the experience before with her short stories of them being nice but not doing anything much for me, but usually there would be one gem in there to make me take back anything I ever said.

These stories are all... fine. Just fine. The first one is a beautiful backstory of a kingdom where baby boys are stolen by the fairies, but girls left until they are seventeen in the first flush of beauty. But the fairies never end a family line - they never take an only.

And the princess is the only one, so surely, surely they couldn't...

Gorgeous backstory, right? But then - no confrontation, no quest, no revelation. She doesn't have to fight to get her memories back. There's no climax. It drifts to a happy ending.

And that's the way with all these stories. They drift to a conclusion, but never fight for it. And I wish there had been a little bit more struggle, or cunning, to make it feel like the happy endings were earned.

This is a collection of four different stories. They include creative and vivid retellings of familiar fairy tales, as well as unique new stories with familiar faery motifs(trending slightly towards modern fantasy faery). According to the summary 2 of the stories are retellings and 2 are new, but they are so well-written and convincingly told that it would be difficult to differentiate the established stories from the new ones if I hadn't already been familiar with them.

The retellings are enriched with masterfully integrated depth and detail, while the original stories are authentically crafted tales that bring unique freshness and excitement while remaining true to the genre.

( Can a modern author really create an new but authentic story true to a genre full of lore that's been established for hundreds of years? I'm not qualified for scholarly analysis of the situation, but in terms of all of these tales being engaging, satisfying reads as well as delivering that elusive and tantalizing dose of "otherness": different worlds and possibilities that are both familiar and strange, fantastic but nevertheless somehow plausible, that that we expect from good fantasy and lore alike; I would have to say yes.)*

*That last was a bizarre run-on sentence and I have no idea whether my punctuation turned out. Luckily I don't really expect anyone to read it that won't forgive me flights of verbiage unsupported by proper structure. Hi!

These stories are such a lush joy to experience. The retelling of the 12 dancing princesses in particular is my favorite version of that story ever - it has a glittery, dark undertone to it that gives it much more depth.