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The Stepsister Scheme (2009)

by Jim C. Hines(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0756405327 (ISBN13: 9780756405328)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

DAW

series

Princess

review 1: It's not art, but it's fun. That's a phrase I've often used to describe books and movies, and it certainly applies to this book. Jim Hines describes one possible tale of what happens after Cinderella and her prince make plans to live happily ever after. It's not what they plan on. Cinderella's stepsisters aren't through with her yet. They kidnap Prince Armand, and Cinderella, with the help of a very non-traditional Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, set out like medieval and magical Charlie's Angels to rescue him. There is much more going on behind the stepsisters' plot. Sometimes I felt like we needed a fuller explanation, but most of the time, you just roll with the action.
review 2: I finished this book about a month or so ago and I've been sitting on it, tryin... moreg to decide how to review it.I liked this book. It was fun but it wasn't a standout. Repackaged fairy tales and fairy tale characters are always a gamble. They're great wells for inspiration and ripe for re-tellings, but they're also frequently done with little creativity or with so little appreciation for the source that I sometimes wonder what the point was. Very little finds the middle ground and I think this book did just that.I liked the characters, though Snow was far and away my favorite. The main character (Cinderella, essentially) was a bit bland but not nearly so much as so many protagonists I've read of late. She was at least not a passive bystander, which I appreciated a lot. She was smart, inventive, and self-propelled.The angle with the fairies almost lost me not because it wasn't well-done but because it felt a bit rote. Their scheming was good, and the machinations of the plot involving them was well-crafted. It just didn't engage me the way I'd hoped and so really, it was the trio of main characters that kept me reading more than anything.Snow's intriguing (if obvious) magic system and her deeper-than-she-first-appears personality was easily my favorite part. Talia (Sleeping Beauty)was surprisingly not as overbearing as characters like that so often are, and she also had more depth than I first expected.Ultimately, it's an adventure story about three friends (and the process of becoming such) standing by one another, sacrificing for each other and finding strength they didn't know they had. It's not a deep book or a fantasy rollercoaster of "Holy crap!" the way say, Stephen Hunt's Court of the Air was, but it does what it does with confidence and a conspiratorial wink.Light spoiler to follow...My only complaint was how surprisingly toothless the violence felt. Perhaps bloodless is a better term, though it's not like there were no fatalities. Some of the action scenes were quite well-crafted in all honesty. I do prefer my action and violence to have some bite so that the scene means something and doesn't feel like a random dance number in a musical. I'm not advocating GRRM levels of disposable (and honestly I'd have been quite upset if any of the three had come to ignominious ends without good cause) but there is a satisfying center, I'm sure. Still: good, fun, light read. I'll definitely check out the others. less

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