Rating – A magical 5/5
“But no one is waiting for a noble prince to appear on his trusty steed here.
A queen might just prove herself a hero, if a princess needs rescuing…..”
My love for Neil Gaiman just grew manifold. What a tale! A progressively feminist take on the regressive “Prince rescues Princess” story, this spunky book comes with exactly the right amount of spook.
Let me start with the cover. The enticing cover comes with enchanting flowers and creepers of olive green and shiny chrome on it, superimposed upon a charming face with full lips, seemingly deep in sleep with flowing dense mop of hair.
Inside the book, Chris Riddell has done some stunning job with the illustrations, with some pages having a stand-out quote in an eerie font giving marvelous impressions into the story.
When her three dwarfs tell her a story of a remote ill-fated castle, the queen decides to take matters in her hand and along with the brave dwarfs rides out towards the east. But things aren’t as they seem! After crossing dangerously creepy forests and tunnels, the queen arrives into a queer city of sleepers. Harrowed by her past, the queen Snow White finds out that all that looks calm and peaceful isn’t really so. She braves everything and uses her mindfulness to fight the evil.
The end is so heart-warming and unexpected. It is just a lovely amalgamation of all my feminist virtues. Saying anything more than this might spoil the whole experience for the reader.
Gaiman brings to life the freakishly weird forests and sleeping people, with the narration alternating between the queen – Snow White (out from the clutches of her step mother) who is just going to get married, and an old lady in another faraway cursed castle trying to fight her desire to slash the heart of the sleeping beauty with a pointy spindle.
THIS QUEEN HAS ALL THE METTLE.
Read it for the sheer pleasurable experience of the below:
1) No prince rescuing the princess.
2) There is no romantic kiss involved. There is only a matter of fact, resurrection lip to lip.
3) Not every sleeper is innocent and not every roused is evil.
Go read it right now and do share your thoughts!
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