I grew up on the Disney fairy tales which is something I feel like i need to apologize for now. I did enjoy the movies enormously though - all the pageantry and excitement with some scariness thrown in as well. But this post is not about Disney and princesses but rather how many other options today's readers have.

Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow have pretty much been my adult education on the old tales and their many collections are must reads for anyone interested in the genre. But if you really want to get a 21st century look at Cinderella in particular then I strongly encourage you to give Malinda Lo's Ash a try. This very subtle take on the story is much more about the emotion of grief then love, which is something Disney clearly missed. To be honest I had a little trouble grasping that as well until I had a long email exchange with my friend, the wonderful Liz of A Chair, a Fireplace and a Tea Cozy. I have heard Cinderella grouped so much into that much maligned "happily ever after" category that I expected that - I looked for that and while romance does play a part in the story it is much more about "Ash's" deep mourning over the death of her mother and her struggle to survive the cold abuse at the hands of her stepmother after her father's subsequent death and dishonor. The happily ever after here is in fact more about Ash retaking control of her life then being saved by a prince.

Which should have been the point all along.

I read Ash for my October column (where there will be a full review) and it is a truly perfect autumn book. There is a sense of darkness that permeates the narrative from the tragedy of her mother's death, to the emotional and physical abuse by the stepmother to the dark side of faerie that is presented by the character Sidhean, a very different spin on the traditional "fairy godmother". Ash is about a longing for death for the main character (to escape life's misery and be rejoined with the childhood she has lost) and also the slow decay of faerie which is represented in Sidhean's attitude. Even the prince is no blank noble face here, but someone who, in the word's of the king's huntress, has returned from battle and learned to love killing too much.

Ash is a very subtle, very quiet, very introspective take on the classic. There are those who will fall for the marketing gimmick and call this one a "lesbian Cinderella" but the fact that Ash's love interest is a female is, to my reading, almost immaterial (although I imagine GBLT teens will rejoice in it). The real story here (which took me some time to discover - but that is my fault and not the author's) is about a girl struggling to find a reason to live and the people she encounters who help her find it.

See Liz's review of Ash also. My ARC was provided by the publisher.