Red as Blood; or, Tales from the Sisters Grimmer

I've come back to this collection of short stories a couple of times after first reading them in middle school. I've always been an avid reader of fairy tale retellings. My sheltered middle school self was shocked by the depictions of the Black Arts and Satanism that Lee incorporates into each of these retellings, and I remember coming away from it admiring Lee's writing but not what she did to the tales.

After taking note as an adult, however, that each tale is set in a different century, I can see now how Lee has molded these tales into an endless battle between "light" and "dark" spirituality (neither of those descriptors really indicating a good or bad side) that culminates in the cathartic spiritual convergence of the last story, show more "Beauty." The effect is really quite spellbinding and leads you to read one tale immediately after another.

As with any short story collection, some of these stories struck a chord with me more than others, but I admire Lee's immense creativity and how she structures it. This is a collection not to be missed by fairy tale fans.

*I purchased the new e-book edition of this title (with the horrible witch chick-lit cover) that includes an extra tale, "The Waters of Sorrow." I believe it's a retelling of "Rusalka" or "Giselle" that Lee wrote many years after this collection was published. It's also quite good and I'm glad it was included in this new edition. show less

Short stories loosely based on well known fairy tales but with unexpected, often macabre twists. Some I liked better than others but Tanith Lee's imagination is always worth exploring. Her writing can be so beautiful it's almost painful.

This collection is not so much a retelling of old fairy tales as a way of using them as inspiration since the connection is often pretty tenuous and in one case very unclear ('Black as Ink', a story of ennui among the better off classes which has the presence of a swan at one point so might be a swan princess story, but really doesn't come across as a fairy tale at all).

One theme becomes rather repetitive: the "woman as Satan worshipper" trope. I also found the notes on the contents page, which attempt to pin the stories to particular geographical locations and centuries, rather redundant since as most of them come across as being able to be set anywhere and very vaguely as to time.

However, I did like a couple of them more than show more others: 'Wolfland' was elevated above the rest of the collection in having actual characters as opposed to cardboard archetypes, and 'Beauty', a science fiction story taking Beauty and the Beast as a jumping off point. So on the whole I would rate this at 3 stars. show less

Godliness is next to more Godliness, apparently. This collection of fairy tale re-imaginings could have been good--a lot of her ideas are excellent and I'd love to see them in the hands of a better writer--but I only got through about half the stories in this collection. And of those six or so, five were varying degrees of allegory, usually of the "wicked person worships SATAN and GOD won't save you then." A little too much in the Christian tradition for me, particularly when the stories were set in distinctly non-Christian eras/places. Any more ham-handed and it would need mittens of bread and mustard.

These are lovely other-worldly fairy tales that give fresh twists to tales already long known. The tones are quiet enough, and the atmospheres generally similar enough, that I wouldn't recommend reading all of these stories straight through. I'd enjoy them most when I read one occasionally, having been away from the book for a while. This would be a five star collection for me, except that at times I wanted a bit more suspense to pull me along, whereas generally these are more like relaxing bedtime stories for adults (NOT for children, for the most part). Regardless, I'd recommend it to fans of re-imagined fairy tales and legends, or for fans of fantasy-based short stories.

The first Tanith Lee I read, this collection of retold fairytales sparked in me a love for the story turned on its head, the tale told from a different point of view, or the reinterpretation of the familiar. It's also fun, in that way real, gruesome, bloody folk tales are fun.

I had to hunt this one down after the Cinderella story was included in a college anthology of Children's Lit. The stories are so rich and vivid you can practically taste them. Lee's version of 'The Frog Prince' is particularly remarkable and a little terrifying at the end. Well worse the hassle it took me to get my hands on a copy.