Twisted Grimms: Fairy Tales Retold - Various Authors - ★★★.¼

AUTHORS: Various

GENRE: Retelling Anthology.

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: An interesting collection of fairy tale retellings, but with an unexpected twist. Not a bad anthology, but I expected it to blow my mind away – that didn’t happen, partly due to my reading preferences. A decent option for retelling/fantasy short fiction fans.

This is a collection of nine stories, all of which are retellings of at least one of Grimm’s fairy tales. There is no editor’s note or author’s note in the collection nor any kind of foreword (Grrrrr!), but thankfully, the title and the cover provide a clue about what to expect. You don’t need to know the original stories as these retold versions can be enjoyed on their own merit. But if you know your Brothers Grimm works, you will enjoy detecting which story (or stories!) have been chosen for the fresh take. I love how the authors didn’t stick to only the popular Grimm tales but opted for some esoteric titles as well.

Considering that there are only nine stories in a 270+ page book, the stories are obviously on the lengthier side of the short fiction scale. Many of them were too long for my liking. But I admire how the stories covered a variety of subgenres instead of being restricted to general dark fantasy. It was fun to see some of the modified fairy tales placed in sci-fi or dystopian settings.

If you are looking for the original story to be presented in a different packaging (say, through a different perspective or set in a different era) but without any significant changes to the plot flow, that’s not going to happen here. I guess a better way of describing these stories is by saying that they pay homage to the original fairy tale(s). So we may get some of the characters or situations from the foundational story, but the plot flow is almost always different. This becomes even more complicated as many authors chose to retell 2-3 Grimm works within a single story. I am not complaining. This approach brings a freshness to the retelling market that is flooded with diluted copycat versions. However, if you are particular about retellings being faithful to the original flow and structure, you might want to modify that expectation before picking this up.

Those who have read the original Grimm tales know that the stories are quite dark and even gory, not at all like the sugary-sweet concoctions that Disney has fed us. Many of the stories in this collection stay true to that aspect by going as dark and “Grimm” as needed. However, there are also some cutesy stories herein. This medley didn’t work well for me as the emotions were too far apart to enjoy in a single anthology. This factor also works against the book because readers who prefer dark stories will be turned off by the diabetic ones, and those who love their fairy tales to be twee will be scandalised by the macabre ones. I’d have liked it better if the book had picked one level of darkness and stuck to it throughout.

As always, I rated the stories individually. But something very interesting happened this time. From stories one to seven, my rating was a consistent 3.5 stars. In other words, I liked these seven tales but none caused me to go “Whoa!” I wondered where the final two stories would end up as these would be the deciders of the overall rating. Unfortunately, the eighth story bored me (it was haphazard in its structure and the content also didn’t appeal to me, even though I loved the story it chose to retell) and the ninth one, though interesting, was very distracting to read as it chose to kill off all CAPS letters and write the entire story in small case. I am too much of a purist to enjoy this kind of radical writing choice. (But a fervent ‘thank you’ to the author for retaining the quotation marks - Phew!)

Because of the mostly consistent performance, I cannot, as is my usual pattern, mention my top favourites here. But I hope my ratings indicate how balanced most of the stories are in terms of their writing and their impact.

Recommended to fantasy short fiction lovers who would love to try a different, twisty take on classic fairy tales.

3.25 stars, based on the average of my ratings for the stories.

I opted for a complimentary copy of this book through a mailing list promo by one of the contributing authors. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.