Customer Reviews

Fitcher's Brides

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Firstly, let me say this. The book really isn't all that bad. It just really didn't end up as one of my favorites. I thought that was rather too bad, because I was excited about reading, one of the less retold fairy tale stories
I thought the story was slow passed and I didn't like the fact that abuse was such a key plot line in the story.
I honestly don't mind such stories, but I just didn't really care for the way that it was represented.
I found it very little entertaining and thought the writer switched writing sequences quiet a bit.
Not the worst retelling fairy tales that I have ever read, but not the best either.

Fitcher's Brides is as engrossing as any fairy tale I've ever read, but with so much more depth. The young maidens are more than just innocent fools; Fitcher is more than just your generic evil guy. How this man, both mesmerizing and menacing, maintains his power over not only his wives but over a growing congregation (which he actually refers to at one point as his "sheep") is what makes this story fascinating and universal. I had trouble putting Fitcher's Bride down; even if you're familiar with the morbid Bluebeard fairy tale, chances are you will keep reading to see how this particular version of it unfolds.

The Bluebeard legend sliced, diced and transplanted to the 19th century in the "burned-over land," that section of upstate New York from which were born the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and other modern religious cults. Frost takes this somewhat forbidding fantasy landscape to the edge of gothic horror for a tale that is really about female empowerment: how long will we suffer from monstrous evil before SOMEBODY fights back? The fight is worth the wait, and the gruesome details leading to it. Clever readers will see that Frost is using the story to analyze why it is that the intolerance and xenophobic hatred that powers the mindless fanaticism of an era that, for all its historical trappings, seems curiously contemporary. For fans of Frost's short but very accomplished body of work, this novel is a definite joy. Frost is writing at the peak of his powers: literate, intelligent fantasy doesn't get much better than this.

Terri Windling's Fairy Tale Series never disappoints. Author Frost here creates a vivid and accurate, if bleakly creepy milieu for his take on Bluebeard. The millennial fervor of mid-19th century America is fascinating in itself and Frost elucidates as he entertains. His characterizations are apt, although I was at first discomifited by his descriptions of the sexual de-flowering of his three protagonists; eventually, it all fits and is entirely appropriate. The story of Bluebeard has always been an ugly for me and it's no less so in this re-telling. Some very engaging and aptly retro prose.