Never After is billed as a collection of “feminist fairy tales,” basically stories that take the idea of the fairy tale wedding and explore the possibility that it might, well, not be such a fairy tale. I will confess that my eyebrows arched pretty high when I read the list of established professionals contributing stories: Laurell K. Hamilton, Marjorie M. Liu, Yasmine Galenorn, and Sharon Shinn. I have read at least one novel from each of them, and my experience was that all but Shinn write novels that are too deeply entrenched in sex to be anything like what I would label feminist writing. However. I was very willing to be pleasantly surprised by this collection, and you know what? I was.
The collection as a whole is pretty strong, and it certainly came much closer to the advertised inspiration than to my expectations. I’m not sure that I would label them as feminist stories, but none of them featured helpless women or hopeless women or passive women who simply waited for their fate to befall them. All of them were love stories to one degree or another (two in the traditional sense of falling in love, while one had it tacked on as part of her “happily ever after” epilogue and the other wasn’t about finding love but rather escaping from a danger that threatened it). I expect this is why the collection is showing up in the romance section of some bookstores rather than the fantasy section, despite all of them being fantasy stories—if in the rather nebulously fantastic, once-upon-a-time-magic-was-real sense.
Now for a few thoughts about the stories themselves:
“Can He Bake a Cherry Pie” by Laurell K. Hamilton is really more of a short story than a novella and is by far the shortest piece in the collection. It was well written, easy and fun to read, and it certainly fit the assignment of taking a fairy tale and turning its direction. That much becomes evident from the opening scene, when the princess sets off to rescue the prince. As far as traditional elements go, the princess fits the “unlikely hero” archetype of fairy tales, the clever and kind non-combatant who relies on politeness, wit, and skills other than brawn to pass the tests set against her. The tests were designed by an evil witch; the turn comes again when she reveals herself as less evil and more simply a woman out of time who bows not to the dictates of current society but to her own moral code and philosophy. I think the story was exactly the right length to tell the events in enough detail without getting over-laden with them. I would probably rank it third, simply because it was both shorter and less of a true love story than some of the others. But it was definitely a charming story and worth my time to read.
“The Shadow of Mist” by Yasmine Galenorn is a novella set in her Otherworld universe, and, as any story in the Otherworld would be incomplete without them, it features the D’Artigo sisters. They appear here as friends and problem-solvers for the heroine, Siobhan Morgan, a selkie whose past has just caught up with her in the form of a stalking, obsessive, obviously abusive ex-fiancé. This was really my least favorite story of the four, probably the least like a fairy tale and the weakest heroine. I don’t mean that in how she was handled by the writer, but literally that her character isn’t strong. She survives, but she isn’t really pro-active, and for someone who has been as terrorized and abused as she was, she was way too resistant to the use of violence for my tastes. She had a very human morality, which doesn’t seem to jibe with the world of much more elemental and brutal non-humans which she is part of. I kind of doubt that will everyone will have my reaction, however: if you are a fan of the Otherworld books, then this story will allow you to “relax” with the characters because it’s not a world-shaking crisis, simply a domestic one. The story isn’t bad, either, not by any means. It is tense and full of action, and the righteous cause of fighting for the love you choose against the forces that would tear you from it is powerful. Simply, it wasn’t my favorite.
“The Tangleroot Palace” by Marjorie M. Liu was one of my two favorites and probably the biggest surprise to me of the bunch. It is one of the two (the other being Hamilton’s) that fit closest into the fairy tale mode. It tells the story of the princess Sally, whose father has betrothed her to a fierce and ruthless warrior bandit prince. Before he arrives to claim her, she decides to seek her fortune in the Tangleroot forest. Along the way she meets a merry band of tricksters, faces her deepest nightmares, defeats an evil queen, and, oh, yeah, finds her true heart-mate. The most interesting parts of this story were those that dealt with the malevolent forest. That setting reminded me of the darkest fairy tales, with trees that watched and whispered and trapped spirits and a sleeping darkness bound in the heart of the woods. The descriptions were poetic and vivid. I will remember this forest for a long time. My only complaint, and this is minor, indeed, would be that the whimsy of the other sections created an almost tinsel-brightness compared to the darkness of the wood. I’m not complaining about the story ending happily, but simply that the mode used to describe Sally at the palace, Sally and the performers together, and Sally at the end, was too light—almost tongue-in-cheek—and therefore at a slight dissonance from what I saw as the heart of the story.
“The Wrong Bridegroom” by Sharon Shinn was my other favorite, and it uses the fairy-tale set-up (princess whose husband is chosen through a series of competitions) merely as the springboard for a story about a young woman growing up, facing the cold realities of the world, and learning what will truly make her happy in life. This was the longest story, and that one that, to me, felt the most complete. The events of the story all took about the same amount of time, so there was no sense of smushing things together at the end to fit it all in. The romance developed slowly but obviously; the title alone cues us to expect that the wrong man is chosen as the princess’s husband-to-be. And this was the kind of romance that you can really believe in, because it’s steady and true and born of self-knowledge rather than mindless infatuation. Princess Olivia gives us the perfect heroine to root for, because you want so badly for her to grow up, and when she is faced with a hellish revelation and an impossible dilemma, she rises to the occasion. She doesn’t let you down. Which, really, could sum up Sharon Shinn’s writing: she doesn’t let you down.
Overall this was a strong collection. None of the stories were bad, and none of them were at such a startling disjunct from the others that they cannot be compared. I think that the determinations of stronger/weaker stories would vary for each reader based on his/her preferences in terms of setting, style, and character types. If you are a fan of any of these authors, I would recommend picking this volume up. The stories might not be exactly what you’re used to from any of them, but they are certainly enjoyable—and you may just find yourself discovering a new favorite writer. I would also recommend this collection to anyone looking for a set of sweet love stories who doesn’t mind a fairy-tale level of fantasy and who doesn’t need a high level of eroticism or a dashing hero to save the day. These girls know how to save themselves (and sometimes their men), and watching them do so makes for a delightful afternoon in another world.
