Ash

This story is a wonderful variation of the Cinderella story. While you do see all the familiar elements of the familiar Cinderella, you will also find the Ash in this story is very much her own person, and most definitely isn't after the prince.

This story flows beautifully, and while at first I was afraid the characters would feel very stereotyped, I instead found that they were very real, especially Ash, who acted in ways that both made sense, and were unpredictable, the way real humans generally act. Highly, highly recommended! ( )

I've been meaning to read this book for ages and I have no idea what took me this long. Maybe because I love the idea of queer retellings of fairy tales and myth, but am so often disappointed with the result. I definitely was not disappointed with this one. There are some things that I would have liked to have seen done differently or explored in a different way but overall I thought it was very sweet with enough darkness to keep it interesting.

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When Ash’s mother, full of fairy tales and knowledge of the old ways, dies, her father remarries a woman who brings two horrendous daughters to the household. Well, Ash is a Cinderella retelling, so that bit should be obvious. But this is a Cinderella retelling with lesbians and actual fairies. It’s so cool.

While Ash is different to your average Cinderella story, I would say that it’s inspired by the story, not an actual retelling as such. There’s a lot of liberty in the story – the Prince hardly figures in it at all. The love story is not between Ash and the Prince, but between Ash and the fairy Sidhean, who has claimed Ash as his own, and the King’s Huntress (for the title is always inherited by a female – no explanation why, which I appreciate: it’s just always been that way). It’s a rare love triangle – a f/f/m one. There’s absolutely no prejudice in this world against gay lovers, which is refreshing.

The writing was decent and clean but there was something about the amazing world – where, in the past, fairies freely dwelt among humans, but now the magic is dying and the time of the fairies is coming to an end – that pulled me in. I wanted more of the world, more of the magic, and even more of the generously retold in-world fairy tales designed to warn mortals of the perils of fairies.

That being said, Ash was particularly awesome at being wary of fairies, and questioned her pull to them all the time. I understood her compulsion to go with Sidhean – it was an escape from her life as a servant to someone who wanted her to having nothing – out of nothing but malice and spite. It was fairly predictable what would happen in the end. But that didn’t detract from my enjoyment. ( )

I sort of enjoyed this story, but I never felt like the author fully developed her characters. The story felt somewhat stilted and slow-moving. The main character felt disconnected from the rest of the people she interacted with. ( )

Ash is a retelling of Cinderella, and it felt like a fairy tale to me. This means that it had both the strengths and weaknesses that I usually feel with fairy tales. The setting was lush, full of beauty, and at times spooky. I loved the fairy tale world Malinda Lo created. But I always feel distant from fairy tale characters. It is always hard to imagine them fully, like they are characters in a dream. Their motivations are often unclear. So the only character I felt particularly warmed to was the charming Huntress. But it was a fairy tale story in a fairy tale land, and I enjoyed it. ( )