Reviewed by Sarina
TITLE: Red Caps: New Fairy Tales for Out of the Ordinary Readers
AUTHOR: Steve Berman
PUBLISHER: Lethe Press
LENGTH: 216 pages
RELEASE DATE: November 11, 2014
BLURB:
Red Caps might be a rock band. Or they might be something more sinister, a fey source of sounds that are but the backdrop to thrills and misadventures. These thirteen stories provide readers jaded by the traditional, Old World fairy tales with tempting new stories that will entice bored readers from their suburban ennui. Closets are waiting to be explored. Escape from work camp leads to a dangerous encounter on a wet road. That high school year book is magical and might be mocking you…or helping you find love. And isn’t love one of the central premises of the fairy tale? These teenage boys and girls need not fear that their love has no worth, because Steve Berman has written for them princesses who love maidens and adorkable students who have wondrous and smart boyfriends. Readers can be assured that, if the tale does not end happy, it ends most memorably.
REVIEW:
I’m going to have to admit that I was SO CONFUSED by this book. I honestly couldn’t give you an adequate description of the majority of the stories here; some were recognizable like a reimagining of the Swan Princess, which was one of the better ones in the book, but others I read and then sat there wondering what it was I’d just finished. I can say that the stories were all well written and that the overall theme was that each story had some twist dealing with the paranormal or magical (more paranormal, truthfully) but besides that? I’ve got nothing.
The main characters in the book are all young adults, which was nice, but many of the tales simply lacked the context needed for me to either understand or even enjoy them. (I will give kudos to the author for the variety of stories presented here, however.) This also isn’t the book for someone looking for a happily ever after; a few stories might fit that bill but the rest are either happy for now or…not. *shrugs* I really wish I had more to say about this one but I literally spent the majority of the time reading this with a perpetual cloud of ‘what the hell was that?’ hanging over my head and the rest of the time I was trying to read faster just I could be done with it that much sooner. You might enjoy this if you’re looking for young adult stories that are more off the wall but don’t go into the book with the ‘fairy tales’ part of the title in the forefront of your mind, you’ll be disappointed.
RATING:
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