I have a confession: Robin McKinley is one of my favorite authors. I love how she takes a fairy tale and makes it her own. The four stories in this collection are wonderful. My favorite is "The Twelve Dancing Princesses."

Highly recommended for fans of retold fairy tales. ( )

There wasn't really anything unique about these fairy tales, nor did they have a particularly excellent descriptive style to make the retelling interesting. Everything was hyperbole and completely unnuanced: every princess/prince beautiful and perfect and beloved by literally everyone, the weather always lovely, etc. I enjoyed Rana's story the most. ( )

Nobody does fairytales like McKinley.

(Also it's so fun seeing the origins of 2013's Shadows here in a book published in 1981.) ( )

Absolutely beautifully rewritten and expanded classic fairy tales. Expands on the air of wonder and mystery with delicately flowing pictures of scenes and people. Featured by the NYPL on its e-book website and I can see why. I've loved McKinley's fantasy novels before but this is special. Thanks NYPL. ( )

Robin McKinley’s strong suit is not short stories. Her books usually start off slow and take a while to warm up and become interesting, and with short stories, that sort of thing just doesn’t work out as well. While the stories themselves had interesting plots, the way McKinley writes most of them is plodding, to say the least. The first story kept losing my interest, but I know how her writing works, so I continued on, regardless of how bored I was from her initial set-up. With that said, however, the first story is by far the weakest and the stories only get stronger and more interesting as the book moves along, which I really appreciated. Well done on whoever created the chronology for this anthology, because the best stories were put last, so there was only buildup and things to look forward to rather than reading a great story at first and then getting disappointed by the next one.

I’m a huge fan of fairy tales, which is part of the reason why I picked up this book. I very much enjoyed the retelling of the Princess and the Frog. While predictable, it was still an interesting twist on the original tale, and I absolutely LOVED the twelve dancing princesses retelling. It could have been several pages shorter, but it was overall quite well done.

Basically, this is great if you’re a fan of fairy tales and Robin McKinley. It takes a lot to to get through the set ups of most of the stories, but they do have some sort of payoff that I felt was worthwhile. It’s not amazing by any means, nor are these particular retellings must-reads, but they’re great if you’re in need for a fairy tale fix.

Also posted on Purple People Readers. ( )