Tag: fairytale retellings

Valentine Week 2025: Fairytale Fantasy, Day Three

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy4 Comments

This year’s theme: RED RIDING HOOD

A reminder–The novels I’ll review during this year’s Fairytale Fantasy series:

Red Rider, by Kate Avery Ellison (2019, indie-published)—reviewed HERE

Wolves and Daggers: A Red Riding Hood Retelling, by Melanie Karsak (2018, indie published–Clockpunk Press, which seems to be owned by the author)–TODAY’S REVIEWED NOVEL

Beauty and the Werewolf, by Mercedes Lackey (2011, Harlequin Nocturne)

Crimson Bound, by Rosamund Hodge (2015, HarperCollins)

Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer (2013, Macmillan)

For the Wolf, by Hannah Whitten (2021, Orbit)

And finally: a medley of interesting outlier pieces, all based on Little Red

TODAY’S REVIEWED NOVEL

Wolves and Daggers: A Red Riding Hood Retelling, by Melanie Karsak (2018, indie-published)

Karsak’s novel, the second Red Riding Hood-themed novel I’m reviewing during Valentine’s Week 2025, is the first in a five-book series, The Red Cape Society. From Amazon, you can buy Wolves and Daggers (book 1) in paperback and in e-book format through the Kindle app and devices, and you can also buy the whole series either volume by volume or as a box set in either format. Apple Books and Barnes & Noble sell Wolves and Daggers in ebook format. Apple sells only book 1 of the series, but Barnes & Noble will also sell you a box set–only of books 1-3, though. Barnes & Noble will sell you an audiobook version, but only Book 1. If you like to consume your fantasy via audiobook, you are out of luck if you want the whole series as far as I know. This may change, or I may have missed a source, so check for yourself.

Karsak’s novel is a very clever gaslamp retelling of Little Red Riding Hood in the form of a detective story. Little Red herself is part of a Victorian detective agency charged with reining in criminal bands of werewolves. There are also good, helpful werewolves. Of course there is a grandmother, and of course there is a red cape (“The Red Cape Society” is the name of the detective agency, as well as the title of Karsak’s series).

You may have a question, if you’ve never read one of these: What is gaslamp fiction?

This is a subgenre of speculative fiction set in a fantasy-Victorian or adjacent parallel time, with gloomy noirish settings, the iconic gaslamps, crazy mechanical contraptions (airships!), and guns typical of the era–very similar to steampunk SF. Read THIS ARTICLE for an illuminating explanation. Three great examples of the gaslamp/steampunk subgenres: Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books, and China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station and the other two novels in his Bas-Lag trilogy. Karsak’s novel is very much lighter than those giants of speculative fiction (of any fiction, any time–my opinion), but her book is very short, almost novella-length, and it is a lot of fun.

As Agent Clemeny Louvel, aka Little Red, chases down the evil werewolves with the help of her detective partner and the good Knights Templar werewolf Sir Richard Lionheart, expect all sorts of in-jokes like the jokey chapter titles, an appearance by Queen Victoria herself, a continuing riff on the “oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clements” rhyme, old-timey motorcars, jokes along the lines of “what big eyes you have” and “straying from the path.” Most fun of all, the name of the queen’s secret investigative service, The Rude Mechanicals.

Readers can also expect the usual werewolf lore involving a pack structure of Alpha and Beta wolves, silver as a surefire werewolf killer, and the like. I don’t know if the other books in the series go on to feature other members of “the unhuman,” but this first novel mentions a number of them, including goblins, vampires, and more. But what is it with werewolves and prizefighting? Is that a part of the lore I just don’t know about, or is it a coincidence that more than one of the books I’ve chosen this week uses prizefighting to underscore the feral power of werewolves? I may be too much of a werewolf novice to know.

The Red Riding Hood connection in this novel is more of a running joke than a true retelling, but it is very charming. The book is well-written but–well, I called it “light” but maybe “slight” is a better term for what I experienced. The characters aren’t terribly well-developed, and the plot is over in a flash (literally). I’m thinking the whole series develops these matters more thoroughly, though. I doubt I’ll read on–although I might, if only to see what the author does with the Rude Mechanicals, but I did enjoy this first volume, and I was very appreciative that the novel doesn’t simply stop. It forges a nice connection to the next in the series without hurling me headfirst off that annoying cliff. I’m figuring that in part this is because the series is not one huge extended uber-novel but a series of episodes nested in the overall Little Red concept.

On a personal note, I like how these first two novels I’ve reviewed are indie-published. If you don’t know a lot about the publishing industry, you may not know what that means. In the past, a writer would be published by one of the traditional publishing houses or not at all–self-publishing usually meant publication by one of the “vanity presses” that preys on clueless or disconsolate unpublished writers–still does, but back then, with even more success parting a would-be writer from her money with little or nothing to show for it. Today, four things have happened: through technology such as word processing, self-publishing has become a viable DIY way to produce a book; ebooks have become a big part of readers’ personal libraries and preferred ways of reading; emerging publishing platforms–Amazon’s Kindle and publishing-on-demand, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Apple’s I-books, Kobo’s ebooks–accept indie-published books and present them alongside trad-published books to potential readers; and traditional publishers have undergone drastic consolidation and acquisition by conglomerates that don’t necessarily care about books. In the process, traditional publishers’ marketing and nurturing of all but their most celebrated authors have dwindled. You can read about it in this really informative blog post. A similar situation has happened in the recording industry. The problem with being indie-published (I am, so I know) is that an author doing this needs to be as good a marketer as she is a writer. There’s overlap between good writing and good marketing, but any individual author might not be equally good at both. Ask me how I know THAT!

I’m very pleased that two of the books featured in my blog this week come from indie authors. The featured writer for today, Melanie Karsak, also employs what is known as an “imprint”–a business name for her book publishing endeavor. For example, mine is Shrike Publications. But in Karsak’s case, she really does seem to have incorporated her imprint into a small business–a “boutique publishing company,” the web site calls it–Clockpunk Press. I should investigate to see if that’s how she has published all her books. There are many, and the ratings on Amazon for this first Red Riding Hood book are high.

NEXT UP, TOMORROW, as Fairytale Fantasy Week continues: Beauty and the Werewolf, by Mercedes Lackey

Valentine Week 2025: Fairytale Fantasy, Day Two

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy5 Comments

This year’s theme: RED RIDING HOOD

A reminder: The novels I’ll review during this year’s Fairytale Fantasy series

Red Rider, by Kate Avery Ellison (2019, indie-published)—TODAY’S REVIEWED NOVEL

Wolves and Daggers: A Red Riding Hood Retelling, by Melanie Karsak (2018, indie published–Clockpunk Press, which seems to be owned by the author)

Beauty and the Werewolf, by Mercedes Lackey (2011, Harlequin Nocturne)

Crimson Bound, by Rosamund Hodge (2015, HarperCollins)

Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer (2013, Macmillan)

For the Wolf, by Hannah Whitten (2021, Orbit)

And finally: a medley of interesting outlier pieces, all based on Little Red

TODAY’S REVIEWED NOVEL

Red Rider, by Kate Avery Ellison (2019, indie-published)

Find it HERE.

This Red Riding Hood-themed novel, classified as YA, is the first book of a series, The Sworn Saga. You can get it through Kindle Unlimited, if you subscribe, and in regular ebook, paperback, and audiobook formats. As far as I know, the book is available to readers ONLY on the Amazon platform, although if you get your fiction through listening, the audiobook is also available through Apple.

This novel’s marketing message claims the book is “a post-apocalyptic werewolf retelling of Red Riding Hood” and “Red Riding Hood meets the Handmaid’s Tale.” The first part of that message is at least superficially accurate. I think the second part is accurate, too, but only if you go on with the series. Since I have not, I can’t swear to that, but the novel makes it pretty clear that the story’s sequels are headed into Handmaid’s Tale territory–even though saying so is kind of like comparing My Golden Book of the Napoleonic Wars with War and Peace.

The world of this novel is set in a future where ordinary citizens have been subjugated to mutated werewolf humanoids. The werewolf females are barren, however, so the werewolf overlords mark certain human girls as mates. When the girls reach puberty, the werewolves take them for breeding stock. (Here’s where the Handmaid’s Tale comparison comes into play.) Meredith Rider is one of the unlucky girls (one of “the Sworn”) marked to be given to a werewolf mate. Werewolves kill her whole family and haul her off to fulfill her destiny. But Meredith, called Red for her red hair and the red, protective cloak her father has given her, is also plucky and resourceful, like all YA heroines. The plot proceeds from there.

The novel has other YA traits and tropes. It is written in the first person, presumably so young female readers can more readily identify with the main character. (Not judging–I’ve done it, too.) It establishes a tricky and interesting relationship situation thing between the main character and her male best friend, on the one hand, and the dominating werewolf known as the Silver Wolf, on the other. The way the author handles it becomes a fresh take on the good boy–dangerous but sexy bad boy trope common to YA novels.

The connection to the Red Riding Hood story only works at the very surface level. I thought at first the werewolf part was because werewolves have become so very popular in recent fantasy fiction, especially that subgenre called paranormal fantasy, but as I mentioned in my last post–while the paranormal fantasy angle may be very convenient marketing, it is also an undeniable and age-old aspect of the Red Riding Hood tale. A child’s casual acquaintance with the story rarely touches on this, but the folklore connection of Little Red with werewolves is sound. As for the rest: the name of the heroine, the grandmother, the red hood, the wolves–all part of the Red Riding Hood story, sure. If you read this novel, though, think about it–except for the werewolves, wouldn’t the story have worked just as well without the other Red Riding Hood trappings? I think it could have been a nice paranormal fantasy series with werewolves. So is the Red Riding Hood connection a marketing gimmick? I’m not sure. But I want to know, and not just because I’m some snarky reviewer! I am in the middle of writing a folklore-themed fantasy novel myself, so I am actually interested in the answer.

I thought the book was pretty well-written. I’m imagining a lot of YA readers will enjoy it. Unfortunately, it also has a hard cliffhanger ending to entice the reader to continue to the next book in the series, and I find that personally distasteful, a real bait-and-switch tactic. But plenty of readers must love this hook into the next volume of the series, so if you are one of them, you can ignore my prejudice here. At any rate, I won’t go on with the series. I feel cheated. I thought I was buying a novel only to discover I have bought a sixth of a novel. But if you love this kind of series, and you accept you are only reading the first installment of a super-novel, there are six installments to love, so go for it. I’m perfectly willing to accept that a long-form Netflix series will come out in seasons with cliffhangers at the end. Why can’t I accept it in books?

I’m very interested in this problem, though–not just as a reader but as a writer of fantasy series novels myself. I always try to wrap each novel up with a satisfying ending, even while suggesting there is more story to come. Am I successful? I hope so. But just stopping–as a reader, I hate that. I have been re-reading Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind (because I’m always intrigued at how that novel works–I don’t think it really ought to, but it really, really does). Now there is a story that stops in the middle, right? Presumably, the book is a three-day marathon in which the main character, Kvothe, recounts his adventures to a scribe. Book One, The Name of the Wind, is Day One. Book Two, The Wise Man’s Fear, is Day Two. And Book Three. . . has never been published (written?), one of the big bad scandals of fantasy publishing, alongside other authors who have never finished their series, such as Scott Lynch with his unfinished Gentleman Bastards series and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. In spite of the huge compulsion of the reader to go on breathlessly to Rothfuss’s sequel (and maybe–as many fans did–scream in protest when the third book was not forthcoming), I found The Name of the Wind–and its sequel as well– to be satisfying, complete novels. I didn’t feel cheated at the end of either one, and I don’t feel cheated not to have Book Three. Sad, though. Really, really sad!

NEXT UP, TOMORROW, as Fairytale Fantasy Week continues: Wolves and Daggers: A Red Riding Hood Retelling, by Melanie Karsak