Soulstring by Midori Snyder

In the first few pages of Soulstring, I was worried that I was reading another book about a spoiled princess who was going to do nothing but complain about how hard she suffered in her privileged life. But by page thirteen, I was deeply engrossed in the story of a young woman who is hated by her parents for the sin of being the firstborn and a girl. Soulstring is a high fantasy story about a young woman who has to discover a way to reclaim the magical power that has been taken from her by her father, wrapped inside a retelling of the Tam Lin myth.

Midori Snyder has the gift of being able to write deeply fascinating characters and show personalities through dialog that many authors lack. She builds a detailed world without a lot of excess prose. In a slender volume of 182 pages she creates two competing countries, and different cultural groups within th... Read More

New Moon by Midori Snyder

Midori Snyder set out to write a trilogy, because that is what fantasy authors were supposed to do, and she wrote one of the best trilogies I have ever read. This little known gem, in its first printing named The Queen’s Quarter and in its second printing referred to as The Oran Trilogy, is a multi-layered treasure of a story.  It is a story not only about the personal struggles of four young heroines, but of the country's quest for political freedom, and the land's fight to find magical stability. Snyder balances all three of these plot threads and weaves an engrossing tale of enduring worth.

New Moon focuses on the story of the Fire Queen Zorah who has ruled the country of Oran for 200 years. Oran was traditionally ruled by four queens together,... Read More

Sadar’s Keep by Midori Snyder

Sadar’s Keep continues the story that began in New Moon.

Three of the four young queens had been found by the end of the first book, and the army that is slowly pulling together around these young woman is starting to find some unusual allies. Midori Snyder focuses the story around the preparations for battle at Sadar’s Keep between the army of the uprising, known as the New Moon, and the Oran military. Sadar’s Keep is also the site of the battle between the current Fire Queen Zorah and her queens 200 years earlier, and Snyder uses that to fill in the back history, making this new fight an echo of the previous battle. And we realize that the previous queens are trying to take control of the current queens and fight through them again, making this fight more than just an echo.

Snyder writes very complex characters in Read More

Beldan’s Fire by Midori Snyder

Beldan’s Fire is the final showdown between the new Queens’ Quarter and the Fire Queen Zorah, and the plot races along to its conclusion. Midori Snyder doesn’t pull any punches as she wraps up the story, and it does not end the way you probably think it will.

She balances beautiful, lyrical writing with gritty characters from the urban underbelly. The characters continue to develop, and are still flawed human beings doing what they have to do, which I think is what makes them interesting, and possibly even truly heroic.

The showdown with Queen Zorah is an epic magical battle for the future of Oran, and is written on a grand scale. This final book is probably the most magical of the three in The Oran Trilogy as the queens start to come into their power and learn how to use it, though mag... Read More

Except the Queen by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder

In Except the Queen, two faerie sisters, Serana and Meteora, accidentally learn a scandalous secret about the faerie queen and let it slip. For their transgression, the two women are separated and banished to mortal Earth to live among humans. They are completely adrift in this new world, and if that weren’t bad enough, their new human bodies are old and overweight.

I think Except the Queen is meant — at least in part — as an exploration of aging. Most of us don’t get magically zapped into older bodies overnight, true. But I think most of us feel sometimes like our aging bodies, with their aches, pains, and gray hairs, aren’t really our “true” bodies. We still feel like the same person we were at 16, 18, 20, so who is this stranger in the mirror with the crow’s feet? And I think we all feel disconnected, so... Read More

Black Thorn, White Rose edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

Black Thorn, White Rose is the second in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's series of adult fairy-tale anthologies. I'd have to say that this is my favorite of the bunch; most of the volumes are good, but this one has so many wonderful stories that have stayed with me for years. A few highlights:

"Stronger Than Time," by Patricia C. Wrede , is a sad but hopeful take on "Sleeping Beauty," told through the eyes of Arven, an ordinary peasant widower. He has lived his whole life in the shadow of a mysterious briar-guarded tower. When a prince enlists his help breaching the tower's defenses, the reader is just as surprised as Arven is. Why does the prince need Arven's help? I dare you not to mist up a little when all is revealed.
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The Green Man edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

In fairy tales, whenever someone journeys into the forest, you just know something strange is about to occur and that the protagonist’s life is going to be changed forever. The same is true of the stories and poems featured in The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest. With this collection, editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling kicked off a series of young adult anthologies, each devoted to a particular theme. Here, the theme is wild nature, and most of the stories feature teenage characters who encounter the wilderness and undergo a coming-of-age experience there.

Of course, I have my favorites. Delia Sherman contributes a tale of the Faery Queen of Central Park, and the insecure girl who faces her in a battle of wits. Read More

Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Fairy tales were my first love when I was a child. My mother introduced me to the joys of stories with The Golden Book of Fairy Tales long before I learned how to read. My early reading included the first three volumes of The Junior Classics and Andrew Lang’s colorful fairy tale books. When Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling started editing anthologies of new takes on the old tales for adults with Snow White, Blood Red, I was delighted. And when Datlow and Windling started editing a series of original fiction for young adults based on fairy tales, I coul... Read More