White As Snow (Fairy Tales)

by Tanith Lee

Paperback, 2001

Status

Available

Call number

PR6062.E4163 W48

Publication

Tor Books (2001), 320 pages

Description

Once upon a time there was a mirror. . . . So begins this dark, unusual retelling of the story of Snow White by the writer reviewers have called "the Angela Carter of the fantasy field"--a whole novel based on a beloved story, turning it into a dark and sensual drama full of myth and magic. Arpazia is the aging queen who paces the halls of a warlord's palace. Cold as winter, she has only one passion--for the mysterious hunter who courts the outlawed old gods of the woodland. Coira is the princess raised in the shadow of her mother's hatred. Avoided by both her parents and half forgotten by her father's court, she grows into womanhood alone . . . until the mirror speaks, and blood is spilled, and the forest claims her. The tragic myth of the goddess Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, stolen by the king of the underworld, is woven together with the tale of Snow White to create a powerful story of mothers and daughters and the blood that binds them together, for good or ill. Black queen. White maid. Royal huntsman. Seven little folk who live in the forest. Come inside, sit by the fire, and listen to this fairy tale as you've never heard it told before. Once upon a time there was a mirror, and a girl as white as snow. . . .… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member ithilwyn
I love retold fairy tales, but this one was a disappointment. Too often I am finding that modern retellers try to make fairy tales culturally relevent to adults with the addition of gratuitious adult situations that do not futher the story.
LibraryThing member MyriadBooks
I'm a fan of Tanith Lee's work and her collection of fairy tales in Red as Bood is among my particular favorites, but I couldn't get in to this novel at all. It seems so... bloated... to me, far away from the cutting brilliance of Lee's other fairy-tale retellings. I'm not surprised that the Fairy
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Tale Series published no other volumes after this work, and I strongly recommend Windling and Datlow's anthologies of fairy tales in short-story form over this novel-length series of Windling's.

Jane Yolen's incredible Briar Rose is still my favorite of this series.

My favorite retellings of the Snow White fairy tale are still Yolen's "Snow in Summer" and Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples."

I suspect if I really want to read the Snow White fairy tale from the dwarves' point of view, I'll need to write the story myself.
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LibraryThing member krisiti
Another fairy tale retelling, this time Snow White. Very Tanith Lee: elegant, lush, sexual and spatters of red as dark as blood. But it didn't make a very great impression on me, nothing left at the end of the book to chew on. And much as I love her style I do wish she'd stop using so many sentence
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fragments. They grate.
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LibraryThing member calmclam
Absolutely gorgeous. Lee takes the dark tones of the original Snow White myth, pulls them together with the story of Demeter and Persephone, and wraps it all together in a world still reeling from the struggle between Greek paganism and Christianity. Queen Arpazia is written lyrically and
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sympathetically up until the bitter end, and Princess Coira is a strong and deftly-written young woman. Totally recommended.
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LibraryThing member VeronicaH.
I read this book for a college course on fairy tales and folklore. I have read some of Lee's other novels, most notably Black Unicorn, Red Unicorn, and the Secret Books of Paradyse, and was excited to read her retelling of the Snow White fairy tale. On the whole, this book was good. Lee attempts to
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give more insight into the central female characters, especially the Queen. Lee actually gives the queen a name and a personality, and not a wholly unsympathetic one at that. Coira, a.k.a. Snow White, however, still seems quite flat as a character. Even in Lee's retelling, Snow White lacks agency and seems incapable of taking action. She remains a passive character who allows things to be done to her continually. The one real exception is taking the dwarf Hephaestion as a lover. Which brings me to perhaps the largest issue I have with Lee's book. She adds to the snow white fairy tale the greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, as well as a host of other random greek mythological characters/story lines, such as Hephaestion. The result is rather convoluted and messy, which ultimately takes away more than it adds. That said, Lee's writing is as good as ever, and the book is enjoyable and interesting on a surface level (I secretly enjoyed those "ah ha!" moments when I recognized various myths etc.). I appreciate the project that Lee and other female fantasy writers have undertaken with books such as this, and I have read some of the other fairy tale retellings published by Tor. I just wish this had turned out better and that Lee's Snow White was a character I could care about. If you are looking for a strong female lead in a fantasy book, you'd do best to look elsewhere.
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LibraryThing member mrsdanaalbasha
In an alternate-history medieval Europe, the noble maiden Arpazia, raised in an isolated castle, finds herself the captive of the conquering general-king Draco. The only remnant of her former life is an exotic glass mirror possessed of witchy powers. She feels no connection to Coira, daughter of
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her forced marriage to the brutal Draco. She becomes the lover of a woodsman, Klytemno, who embodies the divine Hunter King in pagan rituals. Then Klytemno requires her to send her black-haired, snow-pale daughter Coira into the woods as a sacrifice....
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Language

Original language

English

Physical description

320 p.; 5.5 inches

ISBN

0312875495 / 9780312875497
Page: 0.6796 seconds