Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul

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Generally I enjoy fairytale retellings and a couple of these had some nice turns-of-phrases, which would get me thinking. I enjoyed the way Gill kind of climbs into these characters in the stories, whether they are villains or heroes, and enables the reader to see them in a different perspective. To conclude, if you love reading poetry or books written in verse, you should definitely check this out. I loved how the two pieces went together for each poem and story as it gave a new level to my reading experience. There’s also a lot of hatred towards men sprinkled throughout, as well as the message that if you are a wife/mother/whatever then you are not living an important, full life or.

Gill needed an editor or publisher that spoke up about how any boy/man that picks up her book is likely to be put off by the end. Trust Nikita Gill when she turns classic fairytales in verses and her take about feminism, abuse, mental illness, love and empowerment. Right from that captivating cover, this book has had my attention and when I finally had the opportunity to participate in Read-India-Thon this week, I decided it was finally time to read it.What if I told you, the step sisters struggled with insecurities, body image issues and were trying to keep up with societal standards of perfection and that jealousy is not a inherent trait? There is a large mix of poems and stories, so there is bound to be something that every reader will enjoy.

The idea is good, the illustrations gorgeous; but the last 1/3 of the collection is just a big giant bash against men with no real fairytale link at all. It's too bad because many of the poems near the beginning of this compilation are solid, strong takes on known stories. What I loved about the book is how each character had a story that show them flawed and human, breaking the unrealistic standards. What if the princesses never needed to be saved, the prince charmings had an evil abuse so side to them, and the evil queens had a reason to be that way? They replied solely on their superficial and surface level understanding and literary history of these characters, probably collated from Disney films or other mass-made reception material, and then wrote them into a painfully repetitive aggressive girl power, misandristic narrative because that’s what feminism is, right?What if I told you, naive little mermaid who gave her voice and fins away in exchange for a chance at a man's love, realized losing her voice under any compulsion or reason is not an option anymore? Imagine fairytales where the line between heroes and villains are blurred, where there is violence in supposed Prince Charming’s, and where the girl is independent, brave and smart- and can fight her own battles against monsters. Some stories and poems fuelled my hope, showing me victims becoming survivors and villains humanised. There are princesses rescuing themselves, villains who are comfortable being villains, new perspectives on certain stories, and many other unique twists. Were it not for the last quarter of the book this would probably get a four star rating from me; but I struggle to even give it three stars given how much I disliked the last few passages.

Those that especially caught my eye included the image preceding A Tale Of Two Sisters, and the image relating to The Looking Glass. If you are a fan of fairytale retellings, especially ones which explore the classics in a more feminist perspective, then this collection is just perfect for you. This book is an attempt to re make patriarchal fairytales into feminist and female positive remasterings. Magical and creative and enthralling, Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul is fairytales for feminists. There’s empowering women to be independent and standing up to the patriarchy, and then there’s being an asshole.Though the illustrations are gorgeous and there’s a couple of impactful poems/stories in there, I was ultimately unmoved and unimpressed with like, 95% of it. I kind of lost any hope for enjoyment when the phrase “how to play with your brokenness like it is a fidget spinner” was used.

Reimagining traditional tales, this empowering collection of stories, poems and beautiful hand-drawn illustrations gives Once Upon a Time a much-needed modern makeover. Towards the end of the book I began to wonder if the author had run out of fairytales and was simply fuelled by anger. And perhaps needed to hear, in advance of publication, that many women don't take kindly to generic bashing of males. The author takes on these questions and gives us a much more darker and fierce version of the classics like Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood etc.

I enjoyed reading the villains the most because it's fascinating to read what caused them to be vile. We all love fairytales, with damsels in distress and prince charmings and evil queens - but what if each of these tales could be explored from a different perspective? It was an absolute joy to read them and I'm excited to see that the author Nikita Gill has other collections of poetry. A bit too much feminism (for my humble taste) but a lot of it was actually nice and mostly well-balanced. For me, the collection was great, but I think I am the type of reader that needs to spread this out a lot more over time.