Tag Archives: folkloric fantasy

“The Last Wayfinder” by Ellen McGinty

04 Wednesday Mar 2026

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For me, this second book in the Hearts of Ezo series was better than Saints and Monsters. Better written, better planned in terms of plot, with less confusion about the world and its lore, and above all with a cast of main characters that was more appealing than the first.

Oh, and there’s no love triangle!

I wouldn’t be surprised if this one improvement in the second book over the more flawed first book will push other readers to like this story best, too. Lots of us really loathe love triangles in any kind, shape, and form.

THE CHERRY BLOSSOM:

The plot of The Last Wayfinder is simpler than in the first book: In the subjugated Queendom of Ezo, there is a prison that looks like the result of an orgy between Siberia, the Arctic, and a Nazi concentration camp, where the Taigan Empire (?) keeps political prisoners whom it uses as slave labour. In this frozen penal colony, a girl named Kirarin is born, whose imprisoned mother refuses to tell her the reason she’s locked up there, who her father is, or to explain much about the gift she inherited from her: being a Wayfinder, a magical gift for finding paths bestowed by the benevolent sea dragons of Ezo (the same ones that are key in the first book) upon the Ainur people, a practically extinct ethnic group from Ezo obviously based on the real Ainu of Japan.

“Wayfinders are a gift from the dragons, a way to foresee the right path.”

“The wayfinders discovered lands and medicines and doors into heavens. They found the places where myth and land merged.”

One day, the prison guards force Kira to find prey in the forest for them to hunt, or she will pay dearly if she fails. Desperate, Kira uses her Wayfinding gift to track a bear, unaware that the bear is cursed, for it’s really a yajuu, a human turned into a beast due to the corrupt side of magic, which is transmissible by bite in the style of lycanthropy and vampirism. The yajuu retaliates by attacking the prison a bit later, killing Kira’s mother and infecting her younger sister, Yukiko.

In the chaos unleashed by the yajuu’s attack, Kira and her sister manage to escape. From then on, the entire plot revolves round finding a cure for Yuki before she permanently turns into a yajuu within three days, and evading the bounty hunters and the so-called Shadows that are pursuing them, the one sister for being a prison fugitive and the other sister for being a monster. Both girls will die if caught, and on the road between escape and escape, they learn secrets about themselves and their late mother, thanks largely to a Shadows man called Captain Renjiro, who pursues and protects them at the same time.

The way the beginning of the book is structured, it’s easy to see that this story was originally conceived as a Fantasy take on Les Misérables. The borrowed elements are very obvious: there‘s the figure of Jean Valjean (Kira), the plot of imprisonment for a minor crime in an extremely harsh prison (life imprisonment in Abashi Prison for politics), there’s a Bishop Miriel stand in (the Saint in the forest), there’s the figure of the obsessive Inspector Javert (Inspector Jade), there’s even the figure of Fantine (the mother of the two girls), the figure of Cosette (Yuki), and the figure of Marius (to an extent, Renjiro). It’s familiar territory, but it has its own unique twists and forks in the road. It moves at a fairly fast pace once outside the prison and puts the characters through endless adventures, as they won’t have an easy time finding the cure.

But this isn’t a retelling of Les Misérables, so I must warn you not to expect a plot like that of the French classic. Apart from the forced labour camp and Inspector Jade’s relentless persecution of Kira and her sister, there isn’t much else from Les Misérables. I would’ve liked there was more, as I really like the idea of a Japanese Les Misérables, but I think it might’ve been pushing things too far in this book to follow the plot of Hugo’s novel, and it was better for The Last Wayfinder to follow its own course. In any case, the two key themes of Les Misérables, justice and redemption, are also present here.

Apart from the fact that the plot is better constructed in this second book, I also liked that the characters in Wayfinder are more relatable; they make you feel their emotions more. Meera and Soran were difficult to like, more archetypes than people, at least for me because I couldn’t bring myself to empathise with them. Kira, on the other hand, is easy to grow fond of. She can be annoying at times, she takes too many risks and doesn’t think things through much, which leads her to recklessness, but she’s brave, loves her little sister dearly, is a fighter and doesn’t give up even if it costs her her life. She’s tough and incorruptible, but loving. It helps a lot that she has very personal motives for everything she does, the same as Meera’s but the latter was a more generalised motivation (the realm on top on her sister) whilst Kira’s hits closer to home.

She’s so much like Jean Valjean that it hurts a little that this isn’t a retelling of Les Misérables.

THE HAWTHORN:

The weak link in this series has always seemed to be the pacing. In the two books so far, I’ve noticed that Ellen McGinty struggles with pacing and tends to lose more often than win.

Wayfinder is supposed to be more character-driven than plot-driven, I think. At least that’s the impression I got from the fact that the sole narrator here is Kira (the first book had three POVs). But due to the uneven pace of the storytelling, the book reads more like it’s plot-driven, and that hurts it a bit. It’s rare for a plot-driven narration to work well if there’s only one POV, especially in first person. Hence, the beginning of the book up to about 35% reads comfortably at a good pace, and from then on the pacing goes crazy, the reader gets dragged along faster, and the ending seems rushed, jumping from one scene to another without giving details or showing much, more interested in “resolving” the plot than anything else. On top of that, the plot is “resolved” in an info-dumpy little chat that tells us everything in flashback.

It seems to me that this uneven pacing detracts from Kira’s characterisation. For how much she suffers, she should’ve some quiet moments to “digest” what is happening to her, at least pause after a difficult event to collect herself and lick her wounds, because it isn’t natural to go from here to there, jumping from tough stuff to tough stuff without paying an emotional toll. But after leaving the Saint’s cabin, a short solace, she has practically no rest or time to tie her kimono up without having to set off running again. Everything hits her so suddenly, the transitions happen so fast, and she adapts so quickly that it can’t be natural.

Simply put, the racing pace can make her look like a slave to the plot and lose character depth. And since she’s the only POV, this hurts all the characters along with her, especially Ren. I don’t think a second POV would have worked for this story, though, because it’s a more intimate kind of story, more personal than in Saints.

There are also some things that were left out that shouldn’t have been, such as Kira’s father and why her mother’s version of the motive for her imprisonment contradicts the version Kira hears in the palace. I understand that they were possibly omitted because they will appear in the next book and the author wanted to save the revelations for later, but the way it was done was very much like “I’m not telling you because I’m going to tell you someday.” Not my favourite way to keep the mystery. There should’ve been some clues to lay the groundwork for later; if there are any, I honestly haven’t caught them.

By the way, although this second book is a standalone and I know some will read it without having read the first book, I recommend NOT reading this without having read Saints and Monsters first. You will be confused if you do, as there are things you will not understand without the events in the first book. The story here is independent, but the lore is not. And the tie-in at the end between this book and the first one requires that you read Saints first. Saints can be read on its own, but not the other way round as Wayfinder takes place twenty years later.

That said, now that I’ve finished both books, I have some amusing observations regarding the author’s writing and storytelling quirks:

  1. She really loves big sis/lil’ sis tag teams in her stories: Runa/Meera in Saints, and Kira/Yuki in Wayfinder. I wonder if she herself is a big sis in her own family, because she tends to make the elder sisters more protective and mama-like, but she gives both a younger sister (Meera) and an elder sister (Kira) the protagonist role, so she doesn’t discriminate by birth order.
  2. She likes to Sophie’s Choice + Russian Roulette the hell out of her poor girls by making them pick the right one from three glasses of Poison, Also Poison, and Maybe Not Poison. I liked the two versions, but to my personal taste the version in Wayfinder was superior to the one in Saints because of the twist and the emotional cost. 
  3. All hotties must die, my dear, before they are resurrected even hotter (but not hornier). The male main characters in her books tend to undergo a self-sacrifice and transformation/redemption trial, so Beauty & Beast of them. As much as it pains me to say, Saints’s version was better written than the one in Wayfinder, but the one here was more tragic as there’s a previous sacrifice preceding it. The girls also undergo self-sacrifice trials in her books, but for the girls it’s not a transformative or redemptive arc as much as a life-for-a-life bargain.

Now I’m so very curious to see whose story will be in next book . . . If the trend of unintentional B&B vibes (yes, Wayfinder also has one small thing that gives off B&B vibes but I’m not going to spoil that), then for next book I would so love to see the inclusion of a certain Japanese B&B-type fairy tale with the roles switched that I think is as quintessentially Japanese as the sea dragon tales. I wonder if Ellen knows it.

I received a complimentary copy for review from the author in exchange for an honest review.

“The Trident and the Pearl” by Sarah K. L. Wilson

18 Wednesday Feb 2026

Posted by in A Tale Transformed

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It took me quite a while to get into this story, and I almost didn’t make it. I was about to give up halfway through, and that was avoided only because I ended up liking the two main characters and got hooked on the revenge plot.

I’m very demanding when it comes to how Greek mythology is handled in retellings. I pay a lot of attention to worldbuilding in such cases, and although this book is more of a folkloric fantasy yarn than a mythological retelling, the alternate world that has been invented here is clearly a fictionalised version of the Greek islands of the Aegean. Therefore, the gods, myths, and legends that abound here are those of Ancient Greece with altered names.

I did not particularly appreciate the blending of myths here. I am not opposed to combining them with fairy tales when they are compatible and done well, although it is not my preference, and I certainly don’t like it when several Greek myths that have nothing to do with each other are mixed together: each myth has its own context and symbolism, and they are neither interchangeable nor combinable like clothes or shoes, something that not all authors understand. In the case of The Trident and the Pearl, the author has mixed Greek myths that are fundamentally at odds with each other.

On the one hand, there’s the beginning of the book, which seems to be taken from “King Thrushbeard”—my least favourite B&B-adjacent fairy tale for how misogynistic it is—but not entirely, because it also seems to be inspired by the beginning of “Eros and Psyche” when Psyche is sacrificed to the monster. And as the plot develops, an absurd jumble of intermingled Greek myths begins to emerge: Oceanus and Thetys, Poseidon and Amphitrite, Eros and Psyche, Orpheus and Eurydice, etc., etc. So many myths thrown into the pot like vegetables into soup! There are even hints of Dido and Aeneas, elements of “The Odyssey,” something from the myths of Dionysus, something from Hades & Persephone, the Japanese tale of “The Crane Wife” (mixed with Eros & Psyche), and even the Arthurian legend of the Fisher King.

And strangest of all: the gods in this world have souls. Apart from their physical bodies, they have souls. The Greek gods didn’t have souls (or they would’ve been mortal) because they were incorporeal and spiritual beings.

The author is a Christian, which may explain some of these oddities. No offence intended, but Evangelical Christians are not usually the best at understanding ancient mythology, for they judge it through the lens of their beliefs. And so, a polytheistic mythology as ancient as the Greek one isn’t going to fare well if judged through monotheism: either it is sanitised to suit their own “clean” requirements or it comes out worse in some way.

And as if to confirm my suspicions, when I reached the Acknowledgement, I read the author thanking God “for not being like the gods I have created.”

This has been a major obstacle for me, but it won’t necessarily be for others. If you can overlook all this, and I imagine most readers will since my demands regarding lore aren’t the norm, the chances of your liking this book increase. What helps is that you probably won’t even notice the inconsistencies with the myths unless you are very, very knowledgeable about Greco-Roman mythology (and many are not or only know the basics), that this isn’t supposed to be a retelling of any of the myths (it only borrows the clothing, so to speak), and that the author avoided being preachy (an important point for readers who tend to avoid books written by Christian authors for this reason).

The hook in this book is the characters, as it is a very character-driven story told in first person POV by the female protagonist. Coralys is brave, strong, and determined. She cares deeply about her islanders and desperately wants to protect them and solve their misfortunes, even at her own expense. But she’s also emotionally inconsistent, angry, vengeful, quarrelsome for no reason, sometimes rude, and makes terrible decisions. In other words: a good person full of flaws. Oke, on the other hand, is the opposite: kind as can be, loving, calm, and longing for a good life and true love, which his status as an imposter god makes impossible.

(Speaking of them, because I can read some Greek, I find it very grating that Coralys and Okeanos go by the nicknames “Cora” and “Oke.” The Greeks didn’t abbreviate their names in the style of 21st-century English speakers. And yes, I know this isn’t Greece, but it is pseudo-Greece.)

The relationship between Coralys and Okeanos is a very slow burn and depends almost entirely on her taking the initiative (which she does late in the plot, half a dozen chapters from the end). In a way, it’s good that it goes so slowly, because she was married before and is still in love with her late husband, and this new marriage was forced upon her against her will. For his part, Okeanos is a bit childish, loving like a teenager who has just discovered that hormones are good for something: all longing and more yearning. It’s all a bit corny, but at least the rival is dead, so there’s no love triangle.

“Win a god’s oath,

Marry the drowned queen,

Collect the dead to serve.

Fill a thimble with riches.

Heal the crown of the sea.

Turn the betrayer’s heart.

Mend time with golden stitches.

Drink the ocean dry.

Spin moonlight into silver.

Split the seven seas in twain.“

The arc of the five impossible tasks to rescue a soul from the Underworld, which are ten but in this volume only goes through the first five, is very Psyche-like. But I liked these better than Psyche’s impossible tasks because: one, they are more complicated, and two, Coralys is aware that there are “cheat codes” to completing them. This woman isn’t helpless at all, she knows her stuff, and the mix of myths in this particular case has worked very well. I think it’s the best part of the book, honestly.

But boy, is the ending depressing! So much investment in seeing whether she’ll succeed at those five tasks, only to end up wanting to strangle that idiot god. I’m not going to tell you what happens, only that the ending is slightly cliffhangery, but it’s a cliffhanger you can live with until the next book.

Will I read the next book? I don’t know yet. This first instalment was almost fifty-fifty for me, and if it ended up being fifty one-forty-nine, it was by a hair’s breadth. It will depend a lot on my mood when the next book comes out, but given how things have turned out with Coralys and how she almost, almost managed to take revenge on the idiot god responsible for her husband’s tragedy, I’m not entirely lacking in enthusiasm, so I’ll leave it at a maybe.

I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

“A Forest Darkly” by A. G. Slatter

10 Tuesday Feb 2026

Posted by in A Tale Transformed

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How many books with witches living on the edge of a dangerous wood have you read? Probably many, and even if you haven’t, maybe from just looking at blurbs you already know what to expect. The witch is maybe young or young-looking, and very pretty, and there’s usually a “witch hunter” or a demon or a shapeshifter that’s prohibitively hot and sassy and is after her for the same reason cats go after mice.

Gone are the days of the witch in Hänsel and Gretel. And I, for one, find that replacing one fairy tale trope for another modern fairy tale trope that’s not even part of the traditional lore isn’t my idea of improvement.

So when I do pick up a book with a witch protagonist, it must have something worthwhile to offer. In the case of this book, the blurb wasn’t selling me anything out of the ordinary, I took it up on A. G. Slatter’s name alone.

I’ve said this before: the author reminds me of another Angela for how she writes and weaves fairy tales and folklore into her stories in a way that makes them read both familiar and different at the same time, very immersive and atmospheric. That was my impression when I first found her work in an anthology years ago, by now she’s had enough experience and has polished her own style to be different to Angela Carter’s. Some similarities remain, and I’m glad for it, but Slatter is her own distinct flavour of fairy teller.

What does A Forest Darkly offer that’s different to the legion of witch-in-a-dark-wood stories out there? Oh, the answer is easy: Mehrab.

Mehrab isn’t your stereotype of a witch, she’s neither a hot girl nor a terrifying crone. She is a plain healer in her mid-fifties (my estimate) living by a town near a forest known for the usual dangers to folk and fauna, from which children start to disappear and she decides to unmask the culprit one day she accidentally spots the probable cause whilst out hunting. So far, a simple plot, even deceptively Cottagecore-like.

And then she accepts as apprentice a girl that is a Cinderella insert, except that this Cinderella set the prince on fire when he tried to rape her and is now in trouble for it. Oh, and turns out the town is called Berhta’s Forge and someone living there may or mayn’t be the Erlking, who may or mayn’t be behind the disappearance of the children and their cruel fates, and may or mayn’t have had a too-close connection to our witch, who in turn may or mayn’t have a secret past connected to a mysterious Marlinchina—a The Juniper Tree insert.

And because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition even in fantastical worlds, there’s an overzealous churchman doing overzealous churchman things, i. e., build a church and have his first witch hunted, tried, and executed.

What did I tell you about Slatter’s stories being a coexistence of the old and the new?

It’s in this combination of the stereotypical and the innovative that I stumbled upon my one and main issue with this book: the mixing of fairy tales and folklore isn’t quite smooth. There’s witchy lore, there’s religious stereotypes, and there’s Horror genre conventions aplenty, and there’s at least four tales mashed in into this sauce: Cinderella, The Juniper Tree, The Erlking, Little Red Riding Hood, and a dash of the forest god Cernunnos. And the one that stands out as the sore thumb full of bone splinters sticking out of it is the second fairy tale, which is shoved in midway through the book and is rather confusingly told (it took me an age to figure out who Marlinchina was).

I should clarify that it isn’t the number of tales, or even the chosen tales themselves, what makes the combination unsmooth and full of jagged edges. I do think the tales are the right ones given the plotline and characters, and creatively chosen at that, but . . . It’s the mixing of the ingredients what makes for a good cake. You can take eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and flour and make a delicious cake with it, or you can make a complete mess of a batter even your cat will find insulting. In this book, the “batter” is rough, not a smoothly kneaded dough. To use Slatter’s own imagery, it’s a Sourdough full of ragged bits and un-melted pebbles that don’t make for quite the perfect bagel.

It’s Mehrab who keeps this dough cohesive and tasting good despite the rough pebbles your teeth crack on. She’s such an endearing grump, good-hearted and harsh, like a maiden aunt who will scold your mother for not giving you enough veggies and tell your dad he sucks at setting up an example for you whilst secretly slipping you a few candy bars when they’re not looking. Being a woman past middle age, she’s cynical about the world at large, but willing to help those that distrust her, and still romantic enough to enjoy a love affair in which she has the last word.

Faolan, the town’s blacksmith, is another interesting character I wish had had a larger role in this story. At first, he seems like just a love interest for Mehrab, a dependable widower with a rash son to pair up with Mehrab’s witchling protégée, until he gets dragged by his rekindled infatuation into her search for the missing children’s killer and you start to suspect there’s more to the man than meets the eye. I didn’t guess what the truth was, and I won’t say more than I already have in case you want to guess by yourself, so I’ll only say that the developments in this portion of the story are the most original take on the Alder King I’ve read. The solution Slatter comes up with for the mystery surrounding the Erlking is something I had thought of for a story I’ve had running in my head for a year (yes, I do create fairy tales to tell to myself when bored, my brain is weird like that), but even so I didn’t envision such a possibility, and now that I’ve read it, I quite like it. I think my friend Mariella, another Erlking fangirl, will like this arc if nothing else in the book.

The crowning glory arc here is, for me, the thin but strong thread of redemption that’s woven throughout the entire book. One question you ask yourself is the motives for Mehrab’s presence in Berhta’s Forge, as you are told early in the story that she was brought to this town by her witch mentor, the same one who brings Rhea to be fostered and tutored by Mehrab. But why? What does Mehrab need protection from? Oh, a lot, it turns out. A lot to be protected from and a lot to atone for. I wasn’t expecting a redemption arc for a witch, not in this kind of story, and it was a bit of a punch to see her past catch up to bite her very hard on the rump. It’s such a bittersweet conclusion to her redemption arc, enough to make me curse the fact that no author seems to want to twist the original folktale so that the Erlking and Berhta get a somewhat happyish ending. I’m feeling like I’m the lone mariner aboard this ship.

But I’m nevertheless satisfied with it and how it all was wrapped up. Slatter’s stories aren’t happy stories, but they are memorable stories. And to me this is the most memorable of hers to date.

I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

“So Sang the Dawn” by AnnMarie Pavese

31 Saturday Jan 2026

Posted by in A Tale Transformed

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This book is like a creature that escaped Narnia and went in search of East of the Sun & West of the Moon but ended up in a party with Vikings, Romans, the Island of Doctor Moreau, the Polar Express, a sprinkling of His Dark Materials, the Hindenburg crash, and Nordic herders with woolly mammoths instead of reindeer.

It’s not as silly as it sounds, I promise!

I’ve owned this book in its original first edition from 2017 since I took advantage of a discount promo to buy an e-copy, but like it happens to all the discounts & freebies I hoard, it was swallowed by The Kindle Black Hole to never be seen again (don’t ask me how many retellings I have there, I should hire a professional archivist to sort those out). Then last year, I mentioned it in passing to Mariella Taylor—the editor for the new version—and she told me a remastered edition would be published soon. Thus the brand spankin’ new copy is in our hands.

Yes, I’ll probably read the 2017 version one day, too, to see the changes and differences by myself. But this time, I am in no position to do a comparative review with the 2026 version as I’d have wished. I’ll try and ask the author later if possible.

The plot of So Sang the Dawn is seemingly straightforward: it starts with a teenage orphan, Aurora Ballern, making ends meet as best she can on tuition-free education and charity jobs at a boarding school she’s been dropped off at after several failed attempts at adoption. She experiences horrific nightmares about a giant black winged lion attacking her, which only her best friend Raine knows about. There’s some oddities going on in the school’s grounds, which clue you in on something else about Aurora we don’t know yet. And right on cue, three chaps that look like they missed the Hallowe’en-was-in-October memo materialise in front of her and kidnap her to an alternate magical world.

You’d be excused for letting out a groan. “Not another faerie kidnapping,” you think.

But sometimes you do need a little kidnapping to salt-and-pepper things up at a dull boarding school. It’s when Aurora and Raine are in Rathmar of Frostholm that the plot takes off, and you have over 700 pages of hard action and hard emotions.

For me, the best thing in this story was the sisterly bond between Rory and Raine, how strong and selfless it is. There are friendships that are as close or closer than sibling ties, that’s the sort of bond these two girls have. Whilst still in school, you sense they’re close but you also know the looming distance as they go their separate ways in life could weaken or break their bond, so it’s really Frostholm that makes it evident that isn’t going to be their fate. Frostholm is a trial by fire that tests not only their bond but their mettle.

And do they come out of it victorious! Not unscathed, not unscarred, not non-traumatised, no longer innocent, but stronger at a cost. The Warlord that has an interest in Aurora won’t stop at anything cruel to get her to obey his orders, and Raine is a pawn he moves against the prized captive to control her. How often do you find a book with female friendship this wholesome? Bromances are a staple in Fantasy, but womances aren’t. The rarer, the more precious.

As Seigan’s captive, poor Rory is given either no choice or the worst of choices, but somehow manages to find loyal friends. That was my second favourite part: Canaan the centaur, Saoirse the healer, Helja the gladiatrix, Geirin the fighter, Fordrin and Merryn the herders, Eysa . . . She makes a few friends, and in a world of warrior-slaves similar to Rome’s gladiators, this means survival. She’s forced to become a masculinised warrior from a gentle schoolgirl, to survive and protect Raine, but she also uses her wits and heart. I think this compensates for the action after twist after adventure type of plot for those that aren’t much into action-packed storytelling.

I was also favourably impressed by the vast world Pavese crafted, she even created a language (Valthan) for it that to me sounds based on the Norse tongue from the time of the sagas. This world is superimposed on a parallel dimension over Antarctica, and its main culture seems Viking-derivative with a dash of Greco-Roman elements and creatures from generic folklore that seem to have undergone some sort of mad-scientist crossbreeding lab experiment (but aren’t). The second main culture seems to be sort of like the Suomi & Siberian reindeer herders living round the Arctic circle but placed on the opposite Pole. Technology-wise, there’s railroad and airships but no gunpowder-based weapons (that I can remember). It’s quite the pout-pourri, and despite such an amount of mixes the author kept it cohesive as a whole.

I liked that the world feels so expansive and lived-in considering there’s only one narrator, that is a First Person POV, but I would’ve streamlined it a bit by whittling down some of the technology to make it more “old-worldish.” In these alternate worlds, the other dimension is either behind our world in tech or, more rarely, is evenly matched in terms of tech advances. But in this case, it’s selective and unequal, and that makes it feel somewhat off. The world Aurora and Raine are kidnapped from is understood to be our present time, but the world they arrive to is a blend of antiquated (they fight with swords, not pistols/gunpowder) and advanced (there’s trains and zeppelins), and perhaps it shouldn’t have been this off-kilter.

I’m very detail-oriented with the stories I invest in, and this is not enough to bother the readership, just noticeable enough to make my personal immersion wobble.

Another thing that made my immersion wobble was the pace. The beginning up to about Chapter 7, the big-chunk middle, and the ending have different narration speeds. Realistically, the slow pace in the beginning couldn’t have been helped: what is there to do at a boarding school that’s exciting? Unless it’s a magical school, not much. Some of the scenes could be rid of, but there was a risk of making the transition to the alternate world in a hurry, with little set up. The pace of the middle of the book was largely ideal: a combination of speedy action and quiet parts. So that leaves the last part of the book towards the end as the one with the pace that will likely be more bothersome, because it’s a rapid action sequence that ends on a scene that, whilst not a cliffhanger, doesn’t wrap up the story either.

At 700-plus pages, it’s hard to maintain a steady pace for the entire book, and the world and the storyline had become so expansive the book couldn’t be a standalone. I’m pretty sure there’s a second book in the making, probably as fat as this one because there’s still a lot to see before this story can be wrapped up.

That said, there wasn’t anything in So Sang the Dawn that was a genuine issue for me. It’s as a whole a feel good story in spite of the tough themes and the suffering the characters go through. Maybe it’s the hopeful tone of Aurora’s narrator “voice”? Because she’s a disadvantaged girl and has had (and is still living) a hard life, but somehow she’s not lost herself. Not yet, at least. She may end with tremendous PTSD after this, but for now she fights.

You’ll ask me, how does this book fit the Beauty & Beast archetype? Good question, very good question. My answer would be: through the Narnia and East of the Sun & West of the Moon thematic parallels. But you have to know what you’re looking at or it’ll all fly over your hairdo.

I am confident in my supposition that AnnMarie Pavese has drunk from the deep The Chronicles of Narnia well for inspiration, and if you know C. S. Lewis’ series you will see it too. Some things are very obvious, such as Asbjørn as an Aslan equivalent. Tough my daydreaming fairy teller mind thought at first he was the White Bear from East of the Sun & West of the Moon and was waiting for him to barge in anytime now to whisk Aurora off Crazy Viking Jarl Wannabe Seigan’s hands, which of course never happens. That should teach me to not see fairy tales when there’s none, a lesson I naturally won’t learn.

But it’s a thematic connection, as I was saying. The “beastliness” in Aurora is a transformation dependent on virtue, like in Beauty and the Beast or East of the Sun & West of the Moon. The ljren are pure beasts that Asbjørn gave to the world, who got corrupted by a twisted warlord for selfish goals, making Seigan the Evil Fairy/Troll Queen figure. Like Beast/the White Bear, Aurora is blameless for the curse but her transformation into a beast depends on how well she can control her inner demons, her character flaws determine if she’ll be a corrupt ljren or can win the battle of wills to be like the pure ljren and retain her humanity, a struggle she can’t win without someone else. Whilst there’s no romance in this book, you can argue for the pure ljren prince to be her Beauty counterpart as he embodies the uncorrupted gift from the Great Bear.

Girl, do I adore spotting these little hidden folkloric eggs . . .

And perhaps the romance will come in the next book to content all those for which this is their bowl of cream. I don’t lean any particular way in this regard, my interest in this story is held by the psychology of Aurora’s hard heroine’s journey, and I can declare myself satisfied with the various non-romantic relationships Aurora develops in the book, especially with Raine and Saoirse. I’m sure there’s going to be more from these girls soon, no way their story ends here.

I received a complimentary ARC copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.

BOOK REVIEW: “The Edge of a Knife and Other Stories” by Beka Gremikova

01 Monday Dec 2025

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I’d like to start this début review for my A Tale Transformed project dedicated to reviewing fairy tale retellings with some general remarks on the author’s writing:

a. Beka Gremikova has a nice mix of cruelty and warm ‘n’ fuzzies in this anthology, and knows how to strike a balance between both. When she wants to do silly, she does it hilariously silly (so long as you like her brand of humour), and when she wants to be Very Bad to Characters, she makes everyone suffer.

b. Beka can do Mainstream Retelling and Peripheral Retelling both. A rare ability, in my reading experience, as most authors that tackle retellings of fairy tales and myths tend to master only one of them and either be passable or not good at the other.

c. She wrote some of these stories in a way that doesn’t quite fit the mould of traditional retellings. There should definitely be a new and officially-named subgenre to describe this kind of stories that aren’t retellings but feel so fairy tale-ish as if they were. If there’s not one already, I’m going to name this subgenre as Folkloric Fantasy and refer to it as such from now on, credit to this author for calling it so to me, regardless of who came up with the name first as I am not in the know yet.

Now, onto the stories themselves:

These nine short stories were originally published in various other anthologies and magazines, like it happened with her previous anthology. The author has been collecting all the short stories she has written so far in her career, and rewriting them for republication in new dedicated anthologies, of which she has several planned and this is the second to date.

I have read some of these stories in their previous versions, and in at least one case I didn’t recognise the new version at all. It had been so completely rewritten as if from scratch, and in my opinion for the better. I suspect that’s the reason why Beka is doing this massive rewrite, because she has had noticeable improvement in her craft as a writer since her early Indie days and the new versions do show this improvement over the rougher originals.

Of the nine short stories included in this collection, only three are proper fairy tale retellings, two Peripheral and one Mainstream. Another couple of them are retellings of Classics, and the remaining four aren’t retellings but Folkloric Fantasy stories. (Glad to see a few of my friends are catching onto this name and have started talking about Folkloric Fantasy like it’s the newfangled term du jour.)

THE EDGE OF A KNIFE

This one is easy to guess where the inspiration comes from: “The Little Mermaid,” but Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale and not Disney’s. It’s brutal and punchy, the first version already was but this remade one is worse, in a good way.

This was my first favourite, it poses interesting questions about free will, sacrifice, and whether to let our loved ones make their own mistakes or intervene. As I’ve told Beka, the mermaid in this one deserves her own book, not just because of how good the story is but also for the originality of swimming counter-current to Andersen’s dilemma.

THE STARDUST SMUGGLERS

I confess I groaned (and loudly!) at finding this right after the kick in the delicate parts that the prior story was, and protested to the author about it. There’s no tale or myth behind this, it reads like it drinks from all those space shows and films we grew up with, but a goofy drug smuggling in space story that is more Jar Jar Binks than Han Solo to me, more Spaceballs than Star Wars, so I’m guessing this one could be the least-loved story in the collection.

Ah, but it does have a certain charm by the end, when it goes from goofy to gallows humour and you can’t help snort at it.

GOLDEN CHILD

Another story where the inspiration behind it will take you by the throat and shake you till you ask for mercy. It’s that obvious.

Maybe it’s my familiarity with the myth of Midas, but this one didn’t have the emotional punch it should have given the tragic plotline. Maybe it’s that the plot is straightforward and happens quickly and very linearly, it feels like arriving at the end of ”Romeo & Juliet” with the reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets without having the story of Romeo and Juliet onpage to witness it unfolding. But I do get the point is to show the price of ambition for Oros and Silvis, the parents of the characters, and I do think it works better with the added layer compared to the old version.

PAY THE PIPER

This was not only my second favourite story in the collection but is also one of my all-time favourite retellings of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. I think it’s perfect in length and emotional punch, and the wee tweak to the ending made it perfect to me.

Yes, you do know it’ll end like that, but its predictability isn’t the point. There’s one little, almost throwaway aspect this story contains that makes me want to beg, cajole, blackmail, or bribe Beka Gremikova to take it and develop in another story, preferably a full novel (don’t touch this little story), because it’s an extremely intriguing concept I have never seen any other author of Fantasy come up with. So, Beka, if you’re reading this, please state your price.

EVERY BONE IN THE BODY

Maybe the newer, better version makes it easier to see the inspiration, but the version I read first was a lesson in humility for me and the reason why I wholeheartedly believe the ancient Greek tragedians. The gods saw fit to punish my fan-mythicist Hubris and chose Beka Gremikova as my Nemesis. I pride myself in knowing my mythology inside and out, but I didn’t recognise the inspiration for “Every Bone in the Body.” Can you believe it? Disgraceful. And to twist the knife, it’s one of my top three favourite myths too.

Other reviewers might spoil it for those of you that didn’t guess, or the newest version will enable you to guess by yourself, but to me it would be too spoilery to tell. I suffered terribly reading this story, wishing all along it wouldn’t end and also not wishing to change a thing about how it ended. I think that, together with the titular story, this one is what makes the title of the book make sense in context. Expected brutality yet also unexpected is how I’d describe it.

LIKE A FOX

In my opinion, the version published here is better than the first one published years ago, and also very different. It does keep its clean plot, cheery tone, and overall wholesomeness, but the relationship between Veya and Mishak is developed better (I wasn’t a fan of how it was in the first version).

This one is Folkloric Fantasy in its purest form. Out of all the stories here, this is perhaps the one that reads the more YA, in the “for young audiences” sense, not less because the fox shapeshifter POV that narrates this is very young but also because its A-rated storyline makes it appropriate for children, and taken out of this collection it could very well be a children’s book of its own. It also has a very Disney animated motion picture vibe, I couldn’t stop picturing these characters as Disney characters of the old school: sweet, nice, and yes, if you’re one of the older and grumpier folks like me, it can feel a tad cloying. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was written back when the author was very young herself.

RATS IN THE GRAIN

This was another kick on the rump by my Nemesis: I disliked this story in its original version, Beka rewrote it and made me reread it years later in this anthology, and what do you think happened? I liked it, completely oblivious to the fact that I had hated it before. Disgraceful. But also bless my holey memory.

For me, that I liked it this time round was as much that the shapeshifter slave girl (hey, are you sensing a pattern with shapeshifters here?) has an engaging voice as the unrealised potential this story possesses. It isn’t a retelling of anything at all, I would say it can pass for either Folkloric Fantasy or Victorian-era magical urchin misery yarn, but given that it’s me and I have a tendency to pinpoint fairy tales where not even the authors may have placed them, I saw this one as a retelling for one fairy tale in its current finished state and as a potential retelling of two other separate tales if rewritten. The author knows which those tales are, courtesy of yours truly, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to see sequels of this story one day.

ECHO AMONGST THE STARS

I appreciate that the author didn’t have Kaz find out for sure what happened to Mira after the end and that he’s not fully sure he succeeded, as that  makes his sacrifice all the nobler in hindsight. But I also think that things go too much as planned for him, so smoothly and with many coincidences in his favour, which gave me a feeling of implausible ease to overcome challenges presented to him. This is probably another story Beka wrote when she was young, because it has maintained the style of her younger years before her writing matured.

You can tell space stories aren’t a hit with me by now, I suppose, because this one together with the space drug smuggler one were the pointiest “thorns” in this rosebush for me. But others might like this more, especially Sci-Fi fans that fancy haunted spaceships.

ONCE UPON A PUMPKIN

And now, we finally arrive to the big red, gorgeous, fragrant rose that is the jewel of this garden: a Beauty and the Beast retelling that ends this collection on a high, high note.

The Rose

This isn’t a pure B&B retelling but one that combines it with two other tales: Cinderella and Snow White. I’m still scratching my head in admiration at how precisely the author managed this combination of three tales in one, considering B&B is tricky to mix with other tales.

The fairy tales Beka used elements from here are the Grimms’ versions, which is why the Snow White inclusion is bloodier than you’ll expect (because that’s how it goes in the Grimms), and also explains the appearance of the Beast character. Cinderella appears to be Perrault with Disney, though.

Remarkably, Beast is neither from Villeneuve nor Beaumont, much less Disney, but from the Grimms as well. To me, he gives off vibes from the German version, and that would explain the absence of the traditional Beauty figure (which is French).

And I also loved the portrayal of the Evil Queen figure done without villainising Snow White or giving the Queen a sob story to justify her past evil. Bravo for that!

The thorn

I was about to say this was a perfect thornless rose, and then I remembered the pesky fairy godmother.

Whilst other characters also have a touch or two of goofiness, such as one of the princes that is a “no intelligence required” himbo and that Cinderella is his perfect match in terms of cute-silly, you can be more indulgent to those two as they are like that for comedic effect. But the fairy godmother, although she’s also like that for comedic effect, is a flavour of goofy that might be annoying to some readers. Not me, as she did nothing for me either way, but I’m aware that impressions vary widely whenever comedy is present. It all depends on your sense of humour aligning with the writer’s.

Since I opened with some overall positive remarks on the writing, I would like to close with some observations on what could’ve been done to improve this anthology: Taken as a whole, the stories are solid, and the quality is high for what you usually expect from collections. But there’s a mismatch of tone that is very noticeable and will not be to many readers’ liking.

What I mean by this is that because of the title and promotional description, readers are going to expect a certain atmosphere for all the stories here, in this case a dark one (the title is “Edge of a Knife,” after all, and that hints at tough themes), and they won’t find it consistently in every story here. That can lead to judging the “non-compliant” stories more harshly than they would otherwise. I know that has been true for me, I haven’t quite enjoyed the silly/comedic stories because they clashed with the darker and tougher ones that I was looking forward to and evidently liked.

Would I, and other readers, have liked the goofier stories more if we had known of their inclusion beforehand? Likely. If you come expecting comedic and fluffy, you’ll laugh. If you come expecting shock and suffering, you may feel bothered by the clowning about mixed in with the horribly tragic. Therefore, I recommend future collections mind the tone more carefully when considering what stories to include and that it all matches. It’s not only curating the themes, the story quality, or arranging a balanced mix of styles and story types that matters for a quality anthology; atmospheric consistency matters a lot too.