Tanith Lee turns these tales around- the heroines are often the bad guys and though the elements of the tale stay the same, the message is often completely different. The tales are often completely different sometimes in ways I didn't like. My favorite of the tales was "Beauty," a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" the futuristic setting was the perfect landscape for the tale's surprise- this tale gets the essence of Lee's most fantastic work. ( )

I'm so in love with Lee's writing, there were numerous phrases that I paused at, savouring. And darkly retold fairy tales are something that I always love, I've had this on my to-read list for years. Glad that I finally got to it, I loved it. Especially the ones that didn't have a happy ending. :) ( )

Red As Blood contains a whole lot of fractured fairy tales, but not the Rocky and Bullwinkle kids' cartoon variety.

Instead, Lee takes them and makes them darker, or weirder, or more horrifying and strange. She is someone that quite likely has more than the odd weird dream it would seem.

An ok collection of fractured (or more like broken, in Lee's case) fairy tales, at 3.22.

Red As Blood : Paid Piper - Tanith Lee
Red As Blood : Red As Blood [short story] - Tanith Lee
Red As Blood : Thorns - Tanith Lee
Red As Blood : When The Clock Strikes - Tanith Lee
Red As Blood : The Golden Rope - Tanith Lee
Red As Blood : The Princess And Her Future - Tanith Lee
Red As Blood : Wolfland - Tanith Lee
Red As Blood : Black As Ink - Tanith Lee
Red As Blood : Beauty - Tanith Lee

Rat god worship.

3 out of 5

Witch Queen reflection.

3 out of 5

Too sleepy for me.

3 out of 5

Witchy revenge.

3.5 out of 5

Scarlet bloke serving.

3.5 out of 5

Ruler lights out.

3 out of 5

A bit beastly here, Grandma.

3.5 out of 5

No bright swan.

3 out of 5

Alien Lyra.

3.5 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/03... ( )

#15, 2007

I’ve had this book on my shelf for a few years now (it’s the first I’ve completed for my To-Be-Read Challenge), and it’s also the first work I’ve read by Tanith Lee. It’s a book of nine short stories in which Lee takes traditional fairy tales and twists them into new, mostly darker, tales.

By the end, I’ll say that I did enjoy it, although the first couple of stories were dull. Her prose is interesting – very descriptive and full of powerful imagery – but sometimes I felt that prose was wasted on stories which really didn’t go much of anywhere interesting. There was one (the Sleeping Beauty retelling) which left me wondering just what the heck happened, and there was one story whose original I didn’t recognize. (At first, I thought it might have been Aladdin, but on second thought, no).

Those are the negatives. On the plus side, a few of the stories were excellent. My favorites were the Little Red Riding-Hood story (Wolfland), and a science-fiction-y Beauty and the Beast (Beauty). In “Beauty” especially, I found myself engaged with the characters, and hoping for the outcome I wanted. (With many of the earlier stories, I simply didn’t care how they turned out). So, this book has some wonderful moments, although the whole thing isn’t to a consistent standard, IMO. Still, it’s a small volume, and the stories that weren’t great were also not very long. So, I’ll give this 7/10. ( )