Jim C. Hines

The Princess Books — (2009-2011) Publisher: What would happen if an author went back to the darker themes of the original fairy tales for his plots, and then crossed the Disney princesses with Charlie’s Angels? What’s delivered is The Stepsister Scheme — a whole new take on what happened to Cinderella and her prince after the wedding. And with Jim C. Hines penning the tale readers can bet it won’t be “and they lived happily ever after.”

The Stepsister Scheme

I’m always a bit wary of books that take fairy tales as source materials. Too often, I’ve found, they fall into a few typical traps. One is they become enslaved by the structure of one cute explanation/cute twist per each plot point of the original fairy tale, so that the twists themselves become predictable: beat one, two, twist, beat one, two, twist. Another is they become so enamored in the humor aspect of their humorous retelling that they lose sight of the telling aspect — so the plot is unoriginal and dull. Another is that they think the reader brings the character to the story so they don’t need to bother with actual characterization.

I’m happy to say that Jim Hines' new book, The Stepsister Scheme, sidesteps all these pitfalls nicely and is a thoroughly enjoyable and intelligent novel, one that returns to the darker roots of fairy tales rather than the later prettied up versions. The story opens soon after Princess Danielle (Cinderella) has wed her Prince (currently off on a trip). One of her stepsisters, wielding unexpected magic, tries to kill her but is prevented by Talia (Sleeping Beauty), whose birth gifts of fairy graces has turned her into a perfect warrior (if not a particularly cheery one). Before escaping, Danielle’s sister lets her know that her husband Prince Armand has been kidnapped. Soon, Danielle and Talia, joined by Snow White wielding her evil stepmother’s mirror magic, head off to Fairyland, where it seems Armand is being held. Fairyland is a dangerous place for mortals though, despite an uneasy truce signed long ago when the two races nearly fought each to extinction.

Throwing the three women together was a masterstroke, allowing Hines three times the material to play with. It also lets him show different possible readings/incarnations of the same old passive fairy tale heroine. Talia is sleek and killer cold, and at the start it doesn’t seem like there’s much beyond that, though of course there is, and hers is probably the richest characterization. Danielle begins the book in her Cinderella mindset, figuring out what best removes stains from her clothes for instance (something her servants are for), and must round out into a queenly stature by the time all is said and done. The movement is realistically slow and back and forth. Snow is presented as curvaceous and flirty (and flighty), though like Talia there’s more beneath her surface; though her characterization isn’t as rich or subtle as the other two, it’s still nicely three-dimensional, especially toward the end.

Plot-wise, Hines' first smart decision was to dump the idea of treading over age-old material by having his story take place after “and they lived happily ever after.” We do, of course, get the backstories that fill in Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella’s fairy tales, but by withholding that information and dribbling it out in flashback form, Hines is forced to come up with an immediate and original plot, along with strong characters, to hold the reader’s attention. And those backstories are startlingly different, as well as darker than one might expect. Hines isn’t simply playing fill-in-the-blank with the stories we know so well; he’s using them to reveal the origins of character — a much more interesting choice.

The story itself is pretty straightforward but never clichéd: fairyland is the mix of beauty and cruelty, order and capriciousness that one imagines it must be when it isn’t Disney-fied. We meet a troll who is actually troll-like rather than troll-lite, evil stepmothers and sisters who actually are evil and not just temporarily mean, and the story encompasses defeats as well as victories. As well, it takes time, and though time passes quickly in the way a writer can make it (“it had already been three weeks...“), Hines at least makes time pass — the quest isn’t a weekend jaunt.

The Stepsister Scheme, as seems required in fantasy nowadays, is the beginning of several books, though at least this one stands completely and happily on its own. As wary as I am of fairy-tale books, I’m even more wary of a series of them as it’s so easy to go to the well too often. But skeptical as I might be, I’d be happy to try the next one based on how pleasantly surprised I was by the first. Happily recommended. —Bill Capossere

The Mermaid's Madness

In The Stepsister Scheme, Jim Hines introduced us, or rather, re-introduced us, to three of the best-known fairy-tale characters: Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, known respectively in the book as Snow, Danielle, and Talia. When Talia used her deadly fighting skills to save Danielle from a murderous attack by one of Danielle's step-sisters, then joins with Danielle (wielding a glass sword) and Snow White (wielding mirror magic learned at her evil stepmother's hands) to rescue Danielle's kidnapped husband, Prince Armand, you knew this was not your father's fairy-tale.

Now Hines, and his three "kick-ass heroines" are back in The Mermaid's Madness, which, as the name implies, spins out of the tale of the little mermaid who fell in love with a human and then sacrificed herself for him. "Yeah, right" says Hines, who keeps the mermaid, the love, and the human, but this mermaid — Lirea — is just a little mad (OK, a lot mad). She has killed her human lover, her father, one sister and is seeking the other; she carries a knife that can suck the soul from one's body, is leading the merfolk (undines) into war against humanity, and comes with a grandmother who has been practicing powerful magic for centuries and who has her own schemes within schemes that may or may not include curing her granddaughter's insanity. Oh yeah, and Lirea has severed Queen Beatrice's (role model and deeply loved mother figure to all three heroines) body from her soul, giving Snow, Danielle, and Talia about two weeks max to find a cure for Beatrice and a solution to Lirea.

The story starts out with a bang with Lirea's sudden attack and Beatrice's possibly mortal injury. It slows somewhat after that and I admit to wishing it had a faster pace and a bit more action in the first third. There is a lot of traveling from place to place, which partly contributes to the slow pace, and the traveling is done via ship, which also doesn't help — shipboard settings don't offer a lot of potential for action. And because this is happening in near real-time due to the two-week deadline (no pun intended, well, maybe intended), Hines can't be as selective in what he shows as he was in The Stepsister Scheme, where he could move three weeks along in a sentence or two. Here, he pretty much has to show us everything. But the story picks up in the middle third and then becomes extremely fast-paced and active in the latter part.

What compensates (mostly) for the lack of fast-paced action in the beginning is the same strong characterization that made The Stepsister Scheme such an original re-use of the source material. As in the first book, Talia is the most compelling of the three: her barely-controlled violence, her dark background, and, in this book, the blooming revelation that she is in love with Snow all coalesce into a character whose presence greatly increases the tension and intensity of any scene. Snow is also well-developed throughout as she wrestles with her use of magic — its inherent dangers and temptations —, her sense of self (particularly in comparison to her stepmother), and the discovery of Talia's feelings. Danielle isn't quite as strong a presence as the other two, partially for the simple reasons that her talent — speaking with animals — is neither as flashy as Talia's fighting skills and Snow's magic nor is it always at hand as with the other two. That said, she has perhaps a more subtle growth than the other two as she starts to further assert her political rather than magical powers — her role as Princess and future queen of an entire country.

The Mermaid's Madness comes to a resolution of its particular crisis, so can be read as a stand-alone, but it also sets up many questions for future works. As Talia says to Danielle at one point — "just because your story had a happy ending, it doesn't mean everyone's does." And that's true here as well. As mentioned in my review of The Stepsister Scheme, Hines is working with these fairy tales more in their original darker colorations — the real Grimm tales — as opposed to the pastel of Disney or Perrault. There are dark issues underlying all the light-hearted romping going on in The Mermaid's Madness and the ending, while resolved, can't be written off as nicely happy. It's Hines' mix of the light and the dark and the familiar and original, that make this such an engaging series. Recommended. —Bill Capossere

Red Hood’s Revenge

Red Hood’s Revenge is the third book in Jim Hines’ series that reimagines the characters of Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty (going back to their far darker roots than the usual Disney versions) and turns them into a formidable team. As with the first two books, Hines in Red Hood’s Revenge doesn’t simply retell the well-known stories. He reshapes the original story, then jumps ahead in time and uses the familiar tale as a back-story with its many ripples emanating forward in time, some creating plot and some creating character.

For instance, if you have any doubts about whether this is your grandmother’s fairy tale, here’s an early line from Snow (Snow White) to Talia (Sleeping Beauty): “Wake me when it’s time to kill Red Riding Hood.” Of course, this only comes after Danielle (Cinderella) has asked out loud, “You’re telling me Red Riding Hood wants to kill me?"

That is in fact the jumping off point for the plot, what seems like a failed assassination attempt on Danielle by Roudette (Red Riding Hood), a notorious killer for hire. From there, though, the focus moves to Talia as the setting shifts from Lorindar, Danielle’s homeland where all three live, to Arathea, Talia’s homeland which she left long ago after finally awakening from the fairy curse that made her famous (and led to the deaths of all her family, her exile from home, and a queen on the throne who wants her dead).

The action is more fast-paced than in book two, The Mermaid’s Madness, and makes for a very quick, enjoyable read. Danielle takes a bit of a back seat in this one, as does Snow to a lesser extent, while the plot really focuses on Talia and her return home and on Red Riding Hood: what her plans are and how she ended up as she is. Danielle and Snow remain strong characters, but don’t grow as much as we’ve seen in the first two books: Danielle has pretty much gotten the how-to-be-a-queen/leader role down and Snow continues to work her magic, though a running (perhaps too much so) theme in the book is how much that magic costs her. While Talia doesn’t grow so much in this one, we do so multiple sides of her and get more of her very grim back-story. I would have liked to have seen a bit more done with her parallel to Red Riding Hood, as well as with Red Riding Hood’s cape (that will make more sense once you’ve read the book), but those are minor quibbles.

As with the first two books, the novel completely resolves (perhaps a bit too quickly/neatly at the very end) the story’s major points while leaving room for future books. This continues to be simply an enjoyable, well conceived and executed series and Hines certainly hasn’t tapped it out yet. Recommended. —Bill Capossere

The Snow Queen’s Shadow
           
The Snow Queen’s Shadow is not simply Jim Hines’ fourth book in his fairytale princess series, following Red Hood’s Revenge, The Mermaid’s Madness, and The Stepsister Scheme. He makes clear in a direct address to the reader that he sees it as the close to the series, though like any clever writer he leaves himself some wiggle room. Should he choose to end it here, it isn’t at all a bad place to bid farewell to Snow White (Snow), Sleeping Beauty (Talia), and Cinderella (Danielle).

In this perhaps final chapter, Snow White becomes the titular Snow Queen when her most important and potent magic mirror — the one made by her mother — accidentally shatters during a powerful spell. The effect on Snow is profound and immediate. She turns on her friends, to the point of kidnapping Danielle’s son, and then heads for the homeland she has been exiled from for so long, vowing vengeance. A vengeance she is more than capable of as she grows daily more powerful. Meanwhile, Talia and Danielle are joined by a mysterious young woman named Gerta as they attempt to track Snow down and retrieve Danielle’s son, along with preventing her from wreaking havoc. The question, though, is not simply whether they can save the boy or stop Snow, but whether they can do it without killing her.

The book begins with a bang of a chase/fight scene, setting the tone for much of what’s to come. Action is smoothly balanced throughout, with quieter scenes interspersed as breathing spaces between the action-packed fight scenes. The intensity is also nicely leavened by just the right amount of humor, usually of the dry variety. Dialogue is crisp throughout and the prose is cleanly effortless.

The characterization, as has been the case throughout the series, is probably the strongest aspect. Snow is a little one-note perhaps, but there’s a reason for that. Talia and Danielle, like Snow, have grown through the series and here we see them as their fully formed selves. What replaces the coming-of-age/coming-into-power characterizations of the earlier books are the wrenching emotional choices the three are forced to face. And because this is, supposedly, the final book, those relationships that have been building throughout the series now must be resolved; otherwise they become cheap gimmicks of titillation a la bad TV shows.

There is a darker cast to this book than the others (though they had their moments as well). This is fitting in a series that from the beginning has moved through the darker forest — the Grimmer forest — where these tales originated as opposed to the sunny and safe environs they’ve since moved to, especially in their well-known Disney versions. In a review of an earlier book in the series, I quoted a line from Talia to Danielle, “Just because your story had a happy ending, it doesn’t mean everyone else’s does.” That holds even more true in this book.

I’ve given four or four and a half stars to each of the prior books and The Snow Queen’s Shadow continues in that strong vein. The series has been witty, smartly engaging, and well executed in nearly every facet. Part of me is sorry to see it come to an end, but mostly I think Hines has made a great decision here. It would have been easy to play this series out for monetary gain, but he has taken the characters about as far as they can go in terms of development; anything after this would have just been the same people with different adventures. It would have been satisfying, perhaps, (though running the risk of feeling too same-old, same-old), but would have lacked the depth and emotional impact of these first four. The Snow Queen’s Shadow, with its more intense emotionality, more high-stakes decision-making, and a refusal to have a “fairy-tale ending” ends the series on a pretty perfect note. The slipper fits. Recommended. —Bill Capossere