The Spindle Trap - Beka Gremikova - ★★★

AUTHOR: Beka Gremikova

GENRE: Fairy Tale Retelling

PUBLICATION DATE: October 1, 2024

RATING: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: A short story with a different take on 'Sleeping Beauty'. I liked the concept, but I wanted a bit more from the execution. This might have worked better as a novella because it certainly had the potential.

Plot Preview:

Princess Theryn knows that on her sixteenth birthday, she, along with everyone else in her palace, is cursed to sleep for a hundred years when she pricks her finger on a spindle. But instead of running away from spindles, Theryn plans to get pricked and be cursed. Her parents are on the verge of estrangement, thanks to the meddling palace ministers. So if Theryn can get her parents to sleep for a century, the nobles will be long dead by the time they wake up. Sounds like a good plan, right? But as we all know, no plan is foolproof.

The story comes to us in Theryn’s third-person perspective.

I had loved this author’s short story collection, ‘Unexpected Encounters of a Draconic Kind and Other Stories’. So when her new short story promised to be a mash-up of ‘The Parent Trap’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’, my curiosity was immediately piqued. The result was a slightly mixed bag for me.

The concept of the story is great. It challenges many assumptions typically made in fairy tales. I enjoyed the notion of “Sleeping Beauty” willingly going to her sleep, even if her plan is somewhat misguided. I also liked her naiveté of assuming that she could save a marriage just by getting meddlesome people out of the equation. Theryn is a typical young adult who believes that she can set anything right with her actions, and like most young adults, she bases her plan on incomplete information and short-term thinking. At the same time, she is also brave and ready even for something extreme measures if it means keeping her family together. The portrayal of her teen personality is accurate.

The story does a great job in depicting how particular Theryn was about the “after”. Making arrangements to ensure that whoever wakes her up after a century with a kiss is suitable and respectful – very practical indeed! I loved the depiction of the prince – you won’t easily find a royal character like him in classic fairy tales.

Of the other characters, Hylda, Theryn’s maid, is awesome. She is the only character whose personality shines well in this little story. I would have loved to know more about Theryn’s parents but the little we get of the King and Queen is not enough to understand their behaviour completely. I would have loved their characters to be more fleshed out. A part of the issue here is that the story comes in Theryn’s limited perspective. So we know only what she herself knows and lets us know.

The story delivers fairly well as a reworked version of the classic fairy tale. However, the author’s dedication mentions the 1998 movie ‘The Parent Trap’ as having helped inspired this story, which was anyway pitched to me as a mashup of Sleeping Beauty and this movie. But this claim set me on the wrong track as the elements from the 1998 movie were barely visible. This isn’t exactly the author’s fault but mine. To me (or at least, to the “me” that watched the movie eons ago), ‘The Parent Trap’ isn’t a story of divorce but a story of twin girls who swap places to be with the other parent. So I admit, I spent half this story waiting for the non-existent twin to pop up and for some mistaken-identity shenanigans. Whoops!

The ending is the main reason for my low rating. Unlike typical fairy tales or movies, it doesn’t end with a ‘happily ever after’ but with a somewhat bittersweet, ‘let’s do the best we can in this situation’ approach. This ending would have far better suited ‘The Parent Trap’, but it chose to go the typical Hollywood way – annoyingly farfetched and absurdly picture-perfect! To be clear, the ending of this story is realistic. But such an incomplete yet hopeful finale would have been fine had the story not been a YA fairy tale retelling. A happier ending is what the heart wants in this genre and for this age group. Even if I accept the present version, it still has things left unsaid and threads left untied. I would have loved a more sealed and detailed climax to the story.

Another minor complaint concerns the distant floating kingdom of Ildebar. This sounded so magical that I was disappointed to see it stay in the background of the plot. I wanted to know much more about this amazing place. Is the author planning a sequel set in Ildebar? I don’t know, but the potential is certainly there!

All in all, this is a sweet and quick story with an unusual angle to the classic fairy tale. I liked it enough, but it didn’t blow me away the way I expected it too. I am sure I would have enjoyed it better as a novella, with some more detailing to the people, the places, the circumstances, and the finale.

My thanks to author Beka Gremikova for providing me with a complimentary copy of “The Spindle Trap”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the story.