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By Malinda Lo
A lesbian Cinderella.
Ash's father has died, and her cruel stepmother makes her life miserable.
Ash dreams that like in the storybooks, fairies might come to steal her away. And then she meets Sidhean, a dark and dangerous fairy. And she thinks her wish might come true.
When she befriends Kaisa, the King's Huntress, Ash's heart starts to change. She starts to fall in love.
But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own.
And now Ash has to choose between fairy tale dreams and the woman she loves.
Add your review of "Ash" in comments!
Thanks to blog reader Elizabeth for reminding me that "Ash" had come out!
8 comments:
This is a lovely book. I want to add that I love that the fact that Ash is in love with a woman is (other than that she is promised to a fairy) no big deal in the world of the book. Everyone accepts that some people love women and some love men and some love both and let's all move on.
This book is beautifully crafted and written. The world that Ash inhabits is dark and lovely and eerie. I loved that it was rooted in fairy tale, but very very much it's own original story.
You're welcome! Glad that I could help! =)
This sounds like an amazing book, and I wanted to make sure that you hadn't mistakenly skipped over it.
I loved the style and the world-building; I also liked the huntress character very much. I felt like the ending was rushed, though. The main character expects other characters to react in a particular way...and apparently they do, but we don't even get to see it! It's as if deciding to stand up for herself was all she needed to do, and the other characters and the faery world just had to go along with that. The rest of the book has secondary characters who act autonomously, often against Ash's expectations, so the end felt particularly wrong. I am glad I read it, though, which I might not have done if I hadn't seen this blog. It's great to know that in YA lit., lesbian stories (or bisexual ones, at least) are being brought out by major publishers.
I was disappointed by this book. I felt like the characters were flat and the plot was weak. There were very few characters that you knew much about, and the author left many plot threads undeveloped trying to fit the Cinderella plot line.
This was a good book -- short, sweet, and lyrical. But unlike Jane, I felt deeply dissatisfied with the world-building. To me, it seemed like the story was perched on an uneasy juxtaposition of Irish, Regency, and generic-fantasy settings.
Still, I liked it, and I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who's looking for a love story.
Lyrical, as Kay said, is a great word to describe Lo's writing. I wrote a longer review of Ash at http://www.canonballblog.com/?p=2260
I read this reimagined Cinderella-story a couple of weeks ago and though it is not one of those that I will read agin and again it still resonates with me a bit. Here's why: I liked the fairy-human world and I liked the way that the male protagonist does not get the girl. Really, I just find this absolutely satisfying on a deeply personal level. But anyway. As others have stated above, the setting is such that same-sex love is not something controversial in this book thus making it kind of a utopia. I must agree that I found the end a bit rushed but it is a Cinderella story, so I was't expecting something completely different. There are no explicit scenes at all and not much violence either so that I would recommend it even for a younger audience. Not my favorite book of all time, but I still enjoyed reading it.
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