Bookflog: Can He Bake a Cherry Pie?

[dwg]

I got my hands on a copy of Never After, the anthology featuring the non-AB:VH/MG short story that LKH was so gleeful about earlier this year.  So, I took a bullet for the team and this is the result.

Comments

[dwg]

Not gonna lie, I was hanging out for some kind of reinterpretation of Bluebeard where the wife finally bests the guy and maybe shoves him in the closet with his other former brides.

But that would have been fun. Instead, we had this where the heroine walks into the castle and suddenly rewarded for doing nothing but stating that the prince is basically a douche and we should all adore her for it. No. It's fairly pedestrian, really, even after it bludgeons you over the head with its moral.

[dwg]

THE CAKE IS NEVER A LIE. NEVER.

[dreamstrifer]

HEHE! At Youmacon last weekend there was a guy dressed up as Kefka (which was lol in and of itself) offering people cake, swearing that it wasn't a lie.

[dwg]

Ahaha, that's awesome! <3

[dreamstrifer]

OMG Elinore sounds like a dolt. WTF, Laurell, my four year old niece has come up with MUCH better fairy tales than this (probably because she isn't trying so hard to be edgy and ~different~ with her fairy tales, plus she's a four year old who has seen every disney princess movie ever).

...I bet I could bake a better pie than Elinore. :P I come from a family of bakers, she can kiss my ass.

Dragon's Bait is pretty interesting. I like Viviand Vande Velde, so it was a pleasant read. I like the Enchanted Forest series, a LOT. I devoured those in high school, because it DOES play on the whole helpless princess thing (Cimorene isn't a typical princess and she doesn't want to be rescued from the dragon).

[dwg]

I'm scratching my head over the baking contest as Elinore's meant to be this waif of a thing with silky white skin -- but she's somehow spent enough time in the kitchen to learn how to make pie and gingerbread and even stuff a peacock. Kitchens in ye olde times were not very pleasant places to be, and the girl would not have such soft hands if she were there so often.

Also, the prince had fifty years to hone his pie skills. Despite being a douche, he should have easily beat her even with a bit of flakey pastry. I just...I headdesk so hard at how people dumb down the world to make their characters seem smarter.

[othellia]

Maybe he made the same pie every day for 50 years and the sorceress had gotten of them by that point? The mind. It boggles.

[dwg]

I haven't read the others yet. I stayed up until a stupid hour in the morning ploughing through this one. And I'm not exactly looking forward to the others. However, I am curious about Gale Yalenorn, because both her twitter and her website make her seem like she's a bit classy. So I'll have to report back on that one.

I can usually check my brain out in reading stories and overlook some of the glaring issues in favour of enjoyment, but this does nothing but ram down your throat that a girl who is honest and confident in herself can do anything. Only in not such an inspiring way. :\

[estllechauvelin]

Sharon Shinn has a story in there, right? I've read and enjoyed a few of her books, but I'm a little concerned about accidentally seeing some of the LKH story if I pick up this collection.

[alex_lebeau]

I like Sharon Shinn, I love her Samaria series, but that's not enough to make me pick this up.

[foxfire74]

I love Simon Green just because he's so continuously, gleefully over the top. There are more subtle fantasies out there (like, say, Conan) but I heartily second the Forest Kingdom recommendation. Just for the exchange "...but where did the dragon come from?" "I rescued him from a Princess." *Prince is thwapped by aforementioned Princess*

[dwg]

I loooove the Nightside novels for the same reason! If you're going to play with these things, you might as well have some fun with just how ridiculous they can be.

[maladaptive]

I keep reading Green, going "these are not very good books" but I can't stop loving them. His visuals are always the ones that keep coming back to me while much better writers have just disappeared from my memory altogether.

[alex_lebeau]

I wish I could do that, but I got to "these are not very good books," finished the one I had bought, and never went back. Ugh. Makes me sad, as everyone keeps gushing over him.