Teaser Tuesday & Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Fairytale Retellings I’ve Read/Want To Read

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

1%: "A helicopter is no place for a hangover. Hooper closed his eyes and breathed carefully as the engine spooled up."

John Birmingham, Dave vs. the Monsters: Emergence

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. They created the meme because they love lists. Who doesn’t love lists? They wanted to share these list with fellow book lovers and ask that we share in return to connect with our fellow book lovers. To learn more about participating in the challenge, stop by their page dedicated to it and dive in!

This week’s topic: Ten Fairytale Retellings I’ve Read/Want To Read

I’ve read an obscene amount of Peter Pan retellings, but I tried not to have a list with all Peter Pan. Also, I’m cheating on some of these and quoting my own reviews. This didn’t say these had to be my favorites, so you’re getting an interesting assortment aside from too many Peter Pan retellings.

The Child Thief by Brom

A very dark retelling of Peter Pan by the artist Brom that also plays around with Avalon from Arthurian legend. What I really enjoyed about this book is that Brom did more with this story than a simple good and evil battle with Peter Pan versus Captain Hook. The lines are very blurred here. Also, Brom includes BEAUTIFUL illustrations of his characters in the book.

Heart no Kuni no Alice (Alice in the County of Hearts) by QuinRose

This is a manga based on Alice in Wonderland about a girl named Alice Liddell who envies her sister after her lover leaves her for, wait for it, her sister. She falls asleep and wakes in a country (that seems to be the product of her own psyche) where all the men adore her and even some of the ladies find her “charming” and learns that maybe it’s really not that great to be adored by a bunch of guys. What makes this a little different is that, despite this being a manga aimed at females, it’s very violent, which isn’t typically done a whole lot in manga for females. Also, we need to talk about Boris Airay (Cheshire Cat) and Blood Dupre (The Mad Hatter).

Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Another Peter Pan magical realism/fantasy retelling told from the POV of Tinkerbell about Tiger Lily’s life on Neverland including a very turbulent romance with Peter Pan. One of the few YA books with romance that I actually really, really liked. It showed how confusing and unsure a person who’s not used to showing or accepting emotions might be in a relationship with someone who is very emotional though a million things beat through their heart. The ending of that book is my everything. It just seemed to sum up how first loves can be sometimes and how, despite not being with a person anymore, doesn’t mean they didn’t make a huge impact in your life and that you don’t think about them anymore. I might’ve cried a lot a little through the ending.

Fables by Bill Willingham

The inhabitants of fairytale land have been driven from their homes by a powerful force named Adversary. For centuries, these inhabitants have lived in New York City where they lead double lives. To the outside world, to mundanes (a word used for ordinary citizens in the same vein as the X-Men’s term “flatscan”), they appear to be regular human beings. However, beneath the facade, they follow their own rules as handed down by the “permanent” mayor, Old King Cole, and his second-in-command, Snow White, who is often left to handle messes. King Cole is quite the merry old soul and prone to empathy while seemingly not having the stomach to handle the true pressures of being a leader. He leaves difficult decisions to Snow’s discretion. Also, we need to talk about Pinocchio, as well.

Tigerheart by Peter David

This is a ANOTHER retelling of Peter Pan, called The Boy in this story. Actually, this is the story of Paul Dear, a young boy who desperately wants to go to Anyplace (Neverland) to find something to help his mother who is miserable after the death of his one week old sister. However, his story is strongly tied to The Boy and Anyplace since he needs both to achieve his goals, and in some part of himself, Paul believes that he may actually be The Boy or some manifestation of him.

Warm Bodies by Issac Marion

How many people knew this was a Romeo and Juliet retelling without all that grossness that is Romeo? (Yeah, I’m not a fan of Romeo if you haven’t figured this out by now) I dislike zombies as a general rule. We’ve discussed that.  However, I do like spins on zombie stories, and I enjoyed the spin on this one very much. I still haven’t watched the movie yet, though. Also, I refuse to use the movie book cover.

Sense and Sensibilities and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters

Jane Austen with a supernatural twist. I kind of regret reading this and most of these books (Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, etc), but it sounded like a good idea at the time. I don’t hate them, but meh… there were tentacles on the cover…

Letters to Zell by Camille Griep

This story starts when Zell (Rapunzel) unexpectedly leaves her friends to move to the “boonies” (Oz) to run a unicorn farm with her husband Jason and her twins. Zell’s circle of friends consist of the prim and proper Rory (Briar Rose/Sleeping Beauty), the foul-mouthed and cynical Bianca (Snow White) and the levelheaded CeCi (Cinderella). The inhabitants of fairy tale land know that they’re supposed to live out their pages to their happily ever after. On top of that, they are aware of the “outside” world, which is where normal humans live, humans who supposedly give power to their pages through their belief, which supposedly makes it even more important that they act a certain way. Zell, Rory, and CeCi have all achieved their happily ever after, even though it seems they still long for something more. Bianca is still getting to her happily ever after and is slated to be married to a kindly prince she doesn’t love. With Zell’s sudden departure, her friends find themselves in a sudden flux as they begin to rebel against their stories and start to find themselves. This book is told through a series of letters from each woman to Zell as they go from the pain of dealing with her departure to creating a happily ever after on their own terms.

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by A.N. Roquelaure

Erotic 50 Shades of Grey before there was 50 Shade of Grey retelling of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice writing under one of her pen names. Beauty isn’t brought back with a kiss, but um… penis that she couldn’t consent to because she was in a coma or whatev if I remember right. If that’s not right, tell me. I haven’t read these books in well over a DECADE. Despite reading these ages ago and never picking them up again, they are still on my bookshelf. I can’t get rid of them because my husband bought them for me when I was going through my dirty book phase while we were dating, not that THAT ever ended. Besides, I don’t remember them being that… *flashes back to scenes of horsetails being added to naked people via interesting manners crawling around on their knees* Let’s just move on.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Retelling of Cinderella with STEAMPUNK and another YA I didn’t hate. I should really get on with reading the rest of this series. In fact, I should probably re-read this one and then continue the series since it’s been a while.

Honorable Mention

Goes to my favorite gaming duology, which is why it’s just a mention, American McGee’s Alice, which features an Alice whose parents died in a fire and her sanity broke sending her to Wonderland. Even though Alice seems to have mostly beaten her demons by the second game, she finds herself back in Wonderland once again.