Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fairy tale princesses who do some rescuing of their own!, January 8, 2009
Danielle De Glas, aka Princess Whiteshore, aka Cinderella, is having a hard time adjusting to palace life. She loves her prince, Armand, but going from the life of a slave to that of princess isn't easy. To complicate matters, three months after her wedding, Danielle is attacked by her stepsister, Charlotte. The assassination attempt fails, but Charlotte escapes - after telling Danielle she'll never see her beloved Armand again.
This is the set up. Danielle, along with two other princesses (Snow White and Talia, aka Sleeping Beauty), must rescue her prince. Along the way, the true histories of all three princesses are revealed, vs. the "tales" circulating about them. Hines makes excellent use of the darker versions of these fairy tales, rather than the dressed up happily-ever-after versions we are more familiar with.
I love fairy tales, retold fairy tales, and twisted fairy tales - and this book tops my list. Unable to put it down for long, I finished it in one day, and at the end, I turned the last page hoping for more. Very real, well drawn characters draw you in to the story, and fantastic descriptions, world building, adventure, and emotion keep you glued to the pages. At times, I was reminded of movies like Labyrinth or the Dark Crystal (for setting). Shades of Ever After, as well, but I say these only as a passing feeling of nostalgic warm fuzzies (all movies I liked or loved to one degree or another). This book stands completely on its own. Touches like Snow's snowflake "throwing stars" or Danielle's glass sword are unique and perfect for the story Hines is telling. I kept turning pages, not only for the story, but to see what lovely little bits of scenery Hines would include next.
Not quite as funny as his Goblin books, but then, this is a different kind of story (and goblins do, briefly, make a small appearance.) But there's still plenty of humor (three fairy tale princesses kicking butt and taking names!) The world felt fantastically real, and so did the characters. Each princess has a unique personality, partly shaped by the events of her story, as our experiences shape us. Well done, Mr. Hines, and may I say, I sincerely hope this isn't the last we'll be seeing of Danielle, Snow, and Talia.
I eagerly await the next in the series, Mermaid's Madness, and highly recommend The Stepsister Scheme. It's quite different from anything else out there.
Edited to add: Mr. Hines has confirmed that Danielle, Talia and Snow are the main protagonists of the series!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
admittedly, a pleasant surprise, April 7, 2009
To be honest, I'm always a bit wary of books that take fairy tales as source materials. Too often, I've found, they fall into a few typical traps. One is they become enslaved by the structure of one cute explanation/cute twist per each plot point of the original fairy tale, so that the twists themselves become predictable: beat one, two, twist, beat one, two, twist. Another is they become so enamored in the humor aspect of their "humorous retelling" that they lose sight of the "telling" aspect--so the plot is unoriginal and dull. Another is that they think the reader brings the character to the story so they don't need to bother with actual characterization.
I'm happy to say that Jim Hine's new book, The Stepsister Scheme, sidesteps all these pitfalls nicely and is a thoroughly enjoyable and intelligent novel, one that returns to the darker roots of fairy tales rather than the later "prettied up" versions. The story opens soon after Princess Danielle (Cinderella) has wed her Prince (currently off on a trip). One of her stepsisters, wielding unexpected magic, tries to kill her but is prevented by Talia (Sleeping Beauty), whose birth gifts of fairy graces has turned her into a perfect warrior (if not a particularly cheery one). Before escaping, Danielle's sister lets her know that her husband Prince Armand has been kidnapped. Soon, Danielle and Talia, joined by Snow White wielding her evil stepmother's mirror magic, head off to Fairyland, where it seems Armand is being held. Fairyland is a dangerous place for mortals though, despite an uneasy truce signed long ago when the two races nearly fought each to extinction.
Throwing the three women together was a masterstroke, allowing him three times the material to play with. It also lets him show different possible readings/incarnations of the same old passive fairy tale "heroine". Talia is sleek and killer cold, and at the start it doesn't seem like there's much beyond that, though of course there is, and hers is probably the richest characterization. Danielle begins the book in her Cinderella mindset, figuring out what best removes stains from her clothes for instance (something her servants are for), and must round out into a queenly stature by the time all is said and done. The movement is realistically slow and back and forth. Snow is presented as curvaceous and flirty (and flighty), though like Talia there's more beneath her surface; though her characterization isn't as rich or subtle as the other two, it's still nicely three-dimensional, especially toward the end.
Plot-wise, Hine's first smart decision was to dump the idea of treading over age-old material by having his story take place after "and they lived happily ever after". We do, of course, get the backstories that fill in Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella's fairy tales, but by withholding that information and dribbling it out in flashback form, Hines is forced to come up with an immediate and original plot, along with strong characters, to hold the reader's attention. And those backstories are startlingly different, as well as darker than one might expect. Hines isn't simply playing "fill in the blank" with the stories we know so well; he's using them to reveal the origin's of character--a much more interesting choice. The story itself is pretty straightforward but never clichéd: fairyland is the mix of beauty and cruelty, order and capriciousness that one imagines it must be when it isn't Disney-fied. We meet a troll who is actually troll-like rather than troll-lite, evil stepmothers and sisters who actually are evil and not just temporarily mean, and the story encompasses defeats as well as victories. As well, it takes time, and though time passes quickly in the way a writer can make it ("it had already been three weeks . . . "), Hines at least makes time pass--the quest isn't a weekend jaunt.
The Stepsister Scheme, as seems required in fantasy nowadays, is the beginning of several books, though at least this one stands completely and happily on its own. As wary as I am of fairy-tale books, I'm even more wary of a series of them as it's so easy to go to the well too often. But skeptical as I might be, I'd be happy to try the next one based on how pleasantly surprised I was by the first. Happily recommended.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Warms up around the mid-point for a great finish, September 21, 2009
Everyone's heard the fairy tales that end with '...and they lived happily ever after': Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Sleeping Beauty... But what really happened to these women? What if these tales didn't truly end with that 'happily ever after'? Hines mixes the traditional, bloody Grimm brothers fairy tales with a bit of Disney and then adds in some action and adventure. The result is three [...] princesses who don't wait around for a prince to save them.
Danielle Whiteshore, better known as 'Cinderella', managed to get her 'happily ever after'--for a few minutes. When her prince, Armand, is kidnapped by her jealous stepsisters, it's only with the help of two other princesses--Snow White and Sleeping Beauty--that Danielle can hope to regain her prince and happy life.
I started THE STEPSISTER SCHEME assuming I'd love everything about it. Princesses rescuing their princes while kicking ass? I am all about that.
It was a rather rude awakening then for me when I found that the book failed to grab my attention (despite the first scene starting the action). I can't figure out exactly what was off-putting about the beginning of the book. Perhaps it was because the main characters seem just about as interesting as cardboard. O perhaps because everything about the beginning is just a touch awkward: the dialogue, plot, characterization, the bumbling antagonists...
However, THE STEPSISTER SCHEME finally started to draw my attention around the middle point. Where the characters previously meant nothing or little to me, they instead gain an unexpected depth from their relationship and realizations about each other. Without even realizing when exactly it happened, I ended up really adoring the three main characters. I even developed a particular soft spot for Talia (Sleeping Beauty). Before I knew it, I was racing towards the ending.
The second half of the book made up for my discontent with the first half. I'm definitely willing to check out the second in the series in hopes that the characterization continues. Maybe I'll like the princesses' next adventure better.
A bit of a cold fish in the beginning, but warms up around the mid-point for a great finish. Just stick with THE STEPSISTER SCHEME past the awkward bits and it's worth the time invested. My guess is that this is a series that only gets better with each installment.
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