The Huntsman's Tale [Kindle Edition]

Shiromi Arserio (Author), Algol (Illustrator)

Book Description

Looking back over the events of my life, I tried to be an honourable man. I did everything I could to feed my wife and daughter, even when winter was at its bleakest. I tried to keep them safe. Before I met Vala, that was my only goal in life.

One moment, one mistake, was all it took to change everything. If I hadn't left the safety of the Black Forest and wandered on to the royal hunting grounds that day. If I hadn't been caught. But I was, and Vala came into my life. The most evil influence I have ever known came to me that day, in the guise of a beautiful woman.

Why didn't I sense her corrosive nature? Instead I was flattered that she liked spending time with me. I didn't even realise I was lonely until I met her. We embarked on an affair which seems silly to even think about now. We had no future. She, betrothed to the king, me a huntsman with a wife and daughter.

She made sure my family was safe and fed, and in return she asked for my loyalty. I happily gave it to her, until that day, when she asked me to do the one thing I could never do. She told me to murder a girl. Then everything was ruined.

My wife and daughter are long gone. Vala punished them for my disobedience. Not that I escaped my evil queen's wrath. The curse she laid on me ensured she would forever haunt me. Even as her dark actions faded into fairy tale, I would be forever reminded of her. Forever. What a long time that is...

Dark and haunting, The Huntsman's Tale is a retelling of the familiar Snow White fairy tale, told from the point of view of the huntsman who refused to murder a young girl, and was cursed by an evil queen.

Length: 23 pages

Product Details

• File Size: 120 KB
• Print Length: 27 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Shiromi Arserio; 2 edition (June 2, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005465N2A
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #576,791 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Snow White from another angle June 3, 2012

By It's the Caffeine

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I love snow white stories. The way people are able to take the core of the story and elaborate on it or take another angle amazes me.
This retelling is much different than others as it is told not by Snow White or by a narrator or any of that. It's told by a Hunter. This Hunter has a relationship with the step mother before her marriage to the King. He lives in the woods around the castle. Soon after the marriage he, his wife and young daughter get moved into the castle grounds, he as a hunter and his wife as a kitchen worker. Of course, many years pass and things are going great til that vital moment in any snow white tale, the moment when snow white is supposed to have her heart cut out and given to the Queen. It's the Hunter that gets called to do this. Things just go downhill from there for him.
It's truly an interesting turn on the regular tellings. I liked it very much.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved This Tale October 2, 2011

By L. Lilly

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am not usually a fan of alternate tellings of fairy tales, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I felt immediately drawn in to the main character's world. Gaard is not a perfect man by any means, which to me makes him very human. In increments, he goes from a misstep to putting himself in monumental danger, and with each move I totally understand why he does what he does. The writing has a lyrical quality. While there might be a few words or phrases that could have been a bit cleaner, overall I enjoyed the prose. Unlike the writer of the prior review, I found the ending moving -- it made me cry -- as well as realistic, if that can be said of a fairy tale. Even if I didn't know the original story, I would love this. That is why it worked so well for me, I feel it stands on its own as a story about a flawed man who must live with his mistakes.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars From Red Adept Reviews: The Huntsman's Tale August 5, 2011

By Michelle R

Format:Kindle Edition

(I "purchased" a free copy of this book from another site by using a coupon code provided by the writer on a message board.)

Overall: 3 stars

Plot/Storyline: 4 Stars

I love fairy tales, and reworking of fairy tales, and stories in the style of fairy tales. (Believe it or not, after using "fairy tales" three times in a row, I will comment later on that the author is too repetitious.) This is why I was drawn in by the description and why I was charmed by the overall story. My issues come down to writing style and editing, and the general sense that this story wasn't quite ready for prime time.

While the overall story is good, I didn't feel it was always told in the best way possible. For instance, the ending could have packed a real emotional punch -- but didn't quite get there.

I liked what the author did with the story and the angle of telling a familiar tale from a different perspective. When I think of the actual story, I like! There's a good imagination here and this is a pretty good story in need of polish. If you're not a fan of this sort of tale, this will probably not be the one to win you over. If you ARE a fan, you will probably find a moment of two to take away with you.

Characters: 3 stars

I have to say there are some inconsistency at work. The main character was an indifferent father and husband, until he needed to be otherwise for plot reasons, and so what should be some painful moments felt watered down. We're told that Vala is capable of horrible things -- but we don't see them until later on -- not even told about them. Although there is perhaps an implication... Well, unless we count infidelity, but that's a pretty far cry from the rest. I felt sorry for Gaard's plight from a distance, instead of understanding him and feeling fully engaged. A lot of this story rested on ideas of morality, but I remain unclear where he stood for most of this tale, because his values seemed to shift from paragraph to paragraph.

Writing Style: 2 1/2 stars

The tone seemed uneven. Sometimes Gaard sounded like a character in a fairytale and other times the words seemed discordant, too modern. (Exceptional eye-hand coordination?) I was left wondering if the story was set in "once upon a time" or in modern days, but the remote Black Forest setting made it seem set in the past.There turned out to be a reason for this, and I think the reason was somewhat clever, but you have to read the whole story distracted by this to get to the, "Oh, right, I see." Even the explanation makes some of the word choices still quite odd for his place in the world.

Words were sometimes repeated unnecessarily and to distraction.

Example: (Italics are mine.) I awoke instead to the sound of a sleigh whooshing across the snow. I jerked awake, and spotted the sleigh in the distance. An elaborate gold gilted sleigh that could only belong to the king. Fearing for both myself and my family, I tried to hide but it was too late. The sleigh was moving purposefully in my direction. (The first sentence of the next paragraph also included the "s" word.)

I also believe the author meant "gilded" instead of "gilted," but it's redundant in any case when combined with gold.

Fairy tales get away with a little more telling than showing. They tend to cover a lot of ground fairly quickly, and so I find I must be lenient here. Still, there were moments I really would have liked to see fleshed out.

I felt that the author had quite good instincts, but was, perhaps, simply a bit inexperienced. I'd enjoy seeing future efforts by Shiromi Arserio, because I believe time will bring good things!

Editing: 2 1/2 stars

When a story is told in first person, it's sometimes hard to determine the difference between the character's voice and genuine mistakes. However, the reason allowing for the occasionally anachronistic language would indicate the main character would know the different. If I had to guess, I would say most of the questions I had were issues that should have been removed in the editing process rather than the vernacular of the character. Even giving full benefit of the doubt, I was distracted by the genuine errors, e.g., missing punctuation and unintentionally duplicated words.

More About the Author

Shiromi Arserio is a self-proclaimed geek. While other girls her age in London were listening to Take That and watching Grange Hill, Shiromi was busy doing her first major writing effort.... a spec script for seaQuest DSV. Naturally it didn't get picked up, but hey, the show got cancelled anyway, so no loss there.

After a few more efforts in the fan fiction department, while surviving on a healthy diet of Babylon 5 and X-Files, Shiromi found love and a whole new life on another continent. She married a G.I. and traveled the U.S. living it up where the air is thin, and exploring the depths of the Pacific Ocean, before finally settling in the Pacific Northwest. She pursued her dreams of being a performer, starring as Jocasta in Jocasta! Jocasta! as well as playing five different roles in an all-female production of The Comedy of Errors.

She also got to fulfill a geek fantasy by appearing in not one, not two, but three episodes of Lost. Unfortunately, it was season 3 which is, as everyone already knows, when it went downhill.

Shiromi is still pursuing acting in all its forms, as well as writing. Her work can be found in various magazines such as Women's Adventure Magazine and Renaissance Magazine. However, her big love remains SciFi, and thus she started Inter-Galaxy Portal - a science fiction news and reviews website.

You may even have seen one or two of her e-books, such as the Snow White re-telling (written long before all the other re-tellings came out) The Huntsman's Tale, and her science fiction short story Becca. Always one to bite off more than she can chew, Shiromi's latest effort is to turn the 1.8 million word Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata into a slightly shorter science fiction web serial called Shatterer of Worlds which can be read at http://www.shattererofworlds.com.