And what Lackey does with “true love’s kiss” within her world of elements and masters of magic is quite wonderful. Her evil stepmother is her priestess aunt who has taken up with one of the evil gods in the Hindu religion. Her seven dwarves are animals with a touch of the godly about them.
Snow White, in the second novel, is of British and Indian origin, no longer with creamy white skin.
The protagonist Rose, in the most feminist-y way possible, is well educated in spite of the men around her, hates corsets and such nonsense, and doesn’t see herself as beautiful–but the beast learns to see her beauty after getting to know her brain. The beast in the first book was a grossly wealthy man who, through his own arrogance, turned into a beast who still talks, reads and reasons. Fire Rose seemed a bit heavy-handed, but I thought that Serpent’s Shadow was quite well conceived. There seemed to me a stark difference in Lackey’s skill at adapting these two fairy tales into something new. I wanted to understand the context of what Lackey’s bigger project is, how she has adapted the familiar characters of fairy tales more popular than the one I study, and how she writes women in more than just the one book.Īnd so, I began in the beginning, with the first book, The Fire Rose (1995)–a retelling of “Beauty and the Beast”–and then the second, The Serpent’s Shadow (2001)–an adaptation of “Snow White.” And as much as I love a good fairy tale retelling, I found it perhaps even more engrossing that Lackey anchored her novels in both fairy tale and history. "She'll keep you up past your bedtime.After deciding to include Mercedes Lackey’s Unnatural Issue in my dissertation about adaptations of the “Donkeyskin” fairy tale, it only made sense that I should read more books in Lackey’s Elemental Masters series. He has a terrible secret and is desperately searching for something that can reverse the effects of the misfired spell which created his predicament. What she does not realize is that his interest is anything but academic. Instead, her duties are to read to him, through a speaking tube, from ancient manuscripts in obscure, nearly forgotten dialects.Ī requirement for the job was skill in translating medieval French, and she now understands the reason for that requirement, and assumes her unseen employer’s interest in the descriptions of medieval spells and sorcery is that of an eccentric antiquary. Beauty and the Beast in a contemporary urban fantasy setting.Īccepting employment as a governess after hard times hit her family, medieval scholar Rosalind Hawkins is surprised when she learns that her mysterious employer has no children, no wife, and she is not to meet with him face to face.
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