Customer Reviews

Bleeding Through Kingdoms: Cinderella's Rebellion

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Upon purchasing this book, I went into it expecting part Shrek, part the 10th Kingdom, part Into The Woods and part Harry Potter - what I found was that it was indeed `deliciously wicked' as described on the author's site. The book is based on the original German versions of fairytales including Cinderella and the Juniper Tree, which were a tad dark and sinister. The book starts like any other fairytale but quickly take an unexpected turn when Cinderella flees the prince instead of going to him. This catapults the land of happily ever after, known as `the Black Forest,' into chaos that makes its creator, Grimm, none too pleased. Apparently Cinderella wasn't designed to have freewill, but she discovered it and this one action of fleeing the prince make it possible for her to travel through all of the kingdoms of the Black Forest and into the stories of the other inhabitants, including Rapunzel, Snow White and the dwarves as they've never been seen before, Hansel & Gretel, the 3 little pigs, Jack and his beanstalk - complete with giant, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, as well as some new and instantly loveable characters such as Caratasa the sprite and Norco and Togo, who always seem to behave in a humorously strange way. Cinderella's actions upset the master plan of the creator, who sends his more sinister creations, including Snow White's beautifully wicked stepmother Queen Ino, after Cinderella so that he can set things back in their original place. But Cinderella and her new friends don't want to go back to their original stories. They want to be able to seamlessly travel between kingdoms, which they could not previously do. To teach Cinderella a lesson, Grimm starts to exercise his powers to put things back to the way they were and a frantic Cinderella leads a forest-wide rebellion to try to defeat Grimm and rescue the missing inhabitants of the Black Forest. But Queen Ino is also leading a group of the more malicious inhabitants of the Black Forest to the same battle.

I loved this book and was unable to put it down. The author had me laughing hysterically at Cinderella's merciless teasing of the dwarves and biting my nails as I waited to see if Cinderella could survive the Gulf of Broken Dreams to rescue Rapunzel. I say, let this Cinderella be the heroine of a new generation of girls!

I was sad to reach the end of the story.This book has all the great elements I need, humor, sadness, darkness, and most of all, a satisfying ending. Cinderella is an interesting character, strong, willful, and powerful. Riley better hurry up and write another book soon.

I could not put this book down! I was intrigued by the author's twists on old fairytales and their characters. I also enjoyed the new characters introduced,(well some of them)! I was not very fond of Grimm. Caratasa was one of my favorite new characters. The subtle humor throughout this book was enough to keep me so interested I could not wait to read the next chapter. The storyline was captivating.

Warning - if you like your books written on a 3rd grade reading level like "The Da Vinci Code" this book is NOT for you. However, if you want to read something with intelligent writing, I urge you to read this. The author did a wonderful job in capturing the `fairytale' style of writing, which may be what one of the other reviewers found `weird' and did not like. I found the style to be highly appropriate considering it was indeed chock full of nothing but fairytale characters. I found the new characters the author wrote into the mix of characters to be my favorite. Especially Norco and Togo...what are they supposed to be anyways? I LOVED them! Their humor cracked me up. This book would have made a much better movie than that horrible "Brothers Grimm" that was out over the summer. I found my self going `I'll stop for tonight when I get to the end of this chapter" but the suspense was too much for me, so I'd read a little more....until I read the entire thing in one night/early morning. The author used a lot of obscure fairytales in the book, along with some well known ones, such as Little Red Riding Hood, and I wonder if a few more could have been chucked in the mix to have given the book a bit more substance. It was a fun ride with all the characters in one story - reminded me very much of the play `Into the Woods.' What I loved most about this book was that it was the first fairytale I've read where the women were not helpless! And even the women that were villains seem to have hearts....well, maybe not Rapunzel's `mother.' What I found most intriguing the imagery the author created when she had Rapunzel, Snow White and Cinderella traipsing through the forest and seeing the kingdoms change before their eyes - all I'll say at the risk of giving anything away is that the water droplet section was brilliant. And did I mention it was a pretty funny story? Not what I was expecting, but it seemed to work rather well. I think this book is a must read for women of all ages.

My complaints - the prologue was not representative of the writing of the rest of the book. I found it to be bit lacking. The epilogue - a lame device in my opinion - don't care for them much...just give me a sequel already! And I would have like a bit more character development on some of the secondary characters. But overall, I give this a 4/5 for ingenuity, intrigue that kept my interest and laugh-out-loud humor.

This is a story with originality, and a fun read.
Written in contemporary, often tongue-in-cheek, style.
For example, when the little girl in red on her way to grandmother's house says she is Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella mumbles, "I should have seen that coming."

What if Cinderella didn't want to have anything to do with Prince Charming?
What if she ran away to another kingdom and rescued Repunzel from her tower prison?
What if the two girls traveled to other kingdoms in the Black Forest and met more than slightly different versions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, The Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk and other fairy tale characters?
What if Cinderella's adventurous nature caused irreversible changes in Grimm's Fairy Tale world?

If these things happened, there could very well be a Bleeding Through Kingdoms.

I consider 3 stars to be a 'good' rating; and 4 stars to be a 'very good' rating.
A book would have to be 'exceptional' to get 5 stars from me.

I picked up this book based on the synopsis, it looked like an interesting read, and I was not disappointed. It was obvious that it had come from a new writer, who shows great potential to be a successful author.
Could have picked better artwork for the cover though, it looks like Michael Jackson in a dress.

Even when I don't like a book very much, if I start it I usually determine to finish it....in this case, I was simply unable to do so. I bought this book at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville because I thought the story sounded interesting. Indeed, Lashea's idea has a LOT of potential. Before I started reading, I checked out her website and found that she is an English major at the same university I attend, and I thought, "Well, this will be cool, I can find out what an MTSU student is really capable of doing" (especially as I'm an aspiring author myself).
Perhaps because I am always trying to improve my own writing skills to be the best writer I can be, I am constantly aware of the skills of the writer and editors in any book I read, and I firmly believe that bad technical writing can distract from a potentially good story.
And thus it was in this book. Questions in dialogue often ended with a comma instead of a question mark (which I find just WEIRD), there were consistent grammatical problems, and honestly, while the story had potential, it really needed a lot of development. I tried for the first half of the book to give Lashea some credit; it's obvious this book was either self-published or published by an extremely small company (I don't know if Tattered Essence has done anything else), but honestly, if you really want to be a writer, there's just no excuse for not learning proper writing skills, and even less excuse for not knowing them if you're editing a book.
Ms. Lashea, revamp your book a bit, round out the story and the characters (the other thing I hated: every character was extremely one-dimensional), work on your dialogue (to her credit, an extremely hard thing to do well; I have a difficult time with it myself), find a good proofreader, and try again. There may be a very good story deep in there somewhere. It just needs to be brought to the surface.