Title: Snow White Blood Red
Author: Cameron Jace
Publisher: Cameron Jace
Release Date: May 29, 2012
Pages: ebook exclusive
How I Got the Book: Picked it up for free as an Amazon deal.
Purchase: Amazon
Promotional Materials and More: author website
What if all you knew about fairy tales was wrong?
Book description of Snow White Blood Red: A Grimm Diaries Prequel as told by the Snow White Queen:
I have always wondered why you never asked about my name. Was I so superficial to you? So stereotypical and mundane? Why did you treat me as if I were just the monster of the week? You know what I think? You never had the time to really hate me. You wanted to hate me, long before you even met me. You wanted to scrape my existence and avenge your childhood princess by laying all blame on me. What if they didn’t call me the Evil Queen, what if I told you the real story from my point of view instead of hers, would you ever think of me as an angel? Could I ever make you care? I know that deep inside of you, you adore me,but you’re just scared, afraid to admit how much you love the Snow White Queen.
This Grimm Diaries Prequels are a number of short books in the form of epistolary diary entries. The diaries are more of teasers for the upcoming series: The Grimm Diaries, allowing you to get a glimpse of what to expect of the series.
After discovering Bargain eBook Hunter about a month ago, I've picked up numerous free YA ebooks, and Snow White Blood Red (along with the next two prequels, Ashes to Ashes and Cinder to Cinder and Beauty Never Dies) was one of my finds a few days ago when it was still free. Numerous friends of mine have Snow White Sorrow, the first book of the Grimm Diaries series, on their to-read list, but if the quality of the novel is anything like the quality of this prequel, I certainly won't be reading it when it comes out.
The idea behind this prequel is a good one: the Evil Queen from Snow White setting the record straight after the Brothers Grimm twisted the story in order to lock immortals like Snow White, the Queen, and other fairytale people away in the Dreamworld they created. The Queen's personality is a little bland, but her narrative voice--when it's being consistent, that is--works well and the little bit of ego she shows in one passage impressed me.
If only awkward phrasing, grammar flubs, basic errors in dialogue formatting, and strange figurative language didn't mess it up. The version I read is apparently improved from a previous version of Snow White Blood Red that Jace published, but there are still plenty of errors, like this:
and this:
This was not ready to be published yet. Not by a long shot.
The prequel actually seems to contradict itself. In the one moment she deviates from her formal, pleading tone, the Queen says "I knew my daughter would grow up to be a kick-ass girl one day," the pithy excuse she offers is that she's been around since 1812 and seen everyone from the Brothers Grimm to Lady Gaga, so of course her language would change. But then it's explicitly stated that the Sleeping Death all the immortals are cursed with only allow the immortals to be awake and out of the Dreamworld they're trapped in for a brief period of time every one-hundred years. If this is supposed to make sense because the Queen is still able to see what is going on in the "real" world while under the Sleeping Death's curse, it's terribly explained.
Since I already have the next two prequels, I'll be reading them too. I've got my fingers crossed that they will be better than Snow White Blood Red and won't waste their potential.
1 star!
What am I reading next?: Ashes to Ashes and Cinder to Cinder by Cameron Jace
Author: Cameron Jace
Publisher: Cameron Jace
Release Date: May 29, 2012
Pages: ebook exclusive
How I Got the Book: Picked it up for free as an Amazon deal.
Purchase: Amazon
Promotional Materials and More: author website
Book description of Snow White Blood Red: A Grimm Diaries Prequel as told by the Snow White Queen:
I have always wondered why you never asked about my name. Was I so superficial to you? So stereotypical and mundane? Why did you treat me as if I were just the monster of the week? You know what I think? You never had the time to really hate me. You wanted to hate me, long before you even met me. You wanted to scrape my existence and avenge your childhood princess by laying all blame on me. What if they didn’t call me the Evil Queen, what if I told you the real story from my point of view instead of hers, would you ever think of me as an angel? Could I ever make you care? I know that deep inside of you, you adore me,but you’re just scared, afraid to admit how much you love the Snow White Queen.
This Grimm Diaries Prequels are a number of short books in the form of epistolary diary entries. The diaries are more of teasers for the upcoming series: The Grimm Diaries, allowing you to get a glimpse of what to expect of the series.
Review:
After discovering Bargain eBook Hunter about a month ago, I've picked up numerous free YA ebooks, and Snow White Blood Red (along with the next two prequels, Ashes to Ashes and Cinder to Cinder and Beauty Never Dies) was one of my finds a few days ago when it was still free. Numerous friends of mine have Snow White Sorrow, the first book of the Grimm Diaries series, on their to-read list, but if the quality of the novel is anything like the quality of this prequel, I certainly won't be reading it when it comes out.
The idea behind this prequel is a good one: the Evil Queen from Snow White setting the record straight after the Brothers Grimm twisted the story in order to lock immortals like Snow White, the Queen, and other fairytale people away in the Dreamworld they created. The Queen's personality is a little bland, but her narrative voice--when it's being consistent, that is--works well and the little bit of ego she shows in one passage impressed me.
If only awkward phrasing, grammar flubs, basic errors in dialogue formatting, and strange figurative language didn't mess it up. The version I read is apparently improved from a previous version of Snow White Blood Red that Jace published, but there are still plenty of errors, like this:
It [the snow] lay grisly over the contour-lined land like a dead girl’s white coat made of the fur of dead polar bears, like a white wavy carpet that was in no way magical. The curves of the land made the snow look like there was a beautiful gigantic dead girl buried underneath it.
and this:
Her sucking was ticklish. After all, her teeth hadn’t grown yet so it was a funny feeling that I felt.
This was not ready to be published yet. Not by a long shot.
The prequel actually seems to contradict itself. In the one moment she deviates from her formal, pleading tone, the Queen says "I knew my daughter would grow up to be a kick-ass girl one day," the pithy excuse she offers is that she's been around since 1812 and seen everyone from the Brothers Grimm to Lady Gaga, so of course her language would change. But then it's explicitly stated that the Sleeping Death all the immortals are cursed with only allow the immortals to be awake and out of the Dreamworld they're trapped in for a brief period of time every one-hundred years. If this is supposed to make sense because the Queen is still able to see what is going on in the "real" world while under the Sleeping Death's curse, it's terribly explained.
Since I already have the next two prequels, I'll be reading them too. I've got my fingers crossed that they will be better than Snow White Blood Red and won't waste their potential.
1 star!
What am I reading next?: Ashes to Ashes and Cinder to Cinder by Cameron Jace
