A To Z Challenge 2023: Myth And Folk Tales In Fiction - S Is For… Stories And Authors Starting With S

 There are quite a few stories and storytellers starting with S - and here are a few that have folk tales in their background!

Neil Gaiman’s The Sleeper And The Spindle is a stunningly beautiful book illustrated by Chris Riddell, Neil Gaiman’s regular illustrator. It combines two recognisable fairy tales without naming either of them.

A young queen is getting ready for her happily-ever-after wedding when a group of dwarves arrive at her palace to tell her that something alarming is happening where they live - and it’s spreading. A princess is asleep in her castle, where the entire court is also asleep, but the sleep is spreading across the kingdom. 

The queen puts on armour, kisses her prince and departs with the dwarves. She also sends out orders for evacuation. 

What they find when they get to the castle is quite a twist…

Tanith Lee wrote a Snow White retelling - “Red As Blood” - which I read in the original SF magazine in which it appeared but which was reprinted in the author’s fairy tale anthology also called Red As Blood.  In it, Snow White is a born vampire, and the stepmother was trying to help her, not harm her. What sends her into her death sleep is a wafer of the Host.  The Prince who wakes her has nail holes in his hands and feet…

I’m going to be cheeky and mention a Snow White story I wrote, published in an anthology of myths and legends called Mythic Resonance, some years ago.  It’s called “Brothers”,  seen from the viewpoint of the dwarves, who are exiled warriors making a living as smiths in the forest. Here is the link to my post about it. 

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2012/03/brothers-snow-white-and-seven.html

Alas, it’s well and truly out of print, but you might find it still on Apple Books in ebook.

Thomas Burnett Swann’s novel How Are The Mighty Fallen mixes a Bee people from Crete who have settled in Canaan with a Biblical story, that of David and Jonathan, presented as lovers.

This book may be hard to get, but another of his myth and legend books, Day Of The Minotaur, is available in Kindle, as are some of his others. His last novel, Queens Walk In The Dusk, is about Dido Queen of Carthage and Trojan Aeneas, meeting on his way to found Rome. It’s also in Kindle. Go to the Swann Amazon page and see what other goodies are there.

Jim Hines’ Princesses series features one called The Stepsister Scheme, in which Danielle, known to us as Cinderella, has to rescue her man from her stepsisters, who have kidnapped him for their own evil purposes. She is helped by her friends Talia(Sleeping Beauty, who was raped in her sleep and is now an assassin)and Snow, who uses mirror magic. I do recommend all his books in this series. He plays with the fairy tales - they are not just retellings, but show what happens afterwards. The Mermaid’s Madness, for example, has the Little Mermaid go crazy with grief and kill her prince. She is now the leader of her community and has done something dreadful… The characters from The Stepsister Scheme reappear. 

They are available in ebook and I see some of them are about to become available on Apple Books in the next few days.

The Songkiller Saga is a trilogy by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. The novels are Phantom Banjo, Picking The Ballad’s Bones and Strum Again? The premise is that Hell has decided that humans are too likely to be cheered up by music, especially folk music. Folk music must go! In fact, it only works in the US, where folk musicians lose their memory of the songs they once performed and loved. Hell’s scheme doesn’t even work in Canada, just the US; Canadian fantasy author and folk musician Charles De Lint is mentioned! So, a group of American folk musicians travel to England to get their music back. It’s a lovely journey and I discovered some folk bands I hadn’t heard of. 

I have all three volumes in ebook. 

And finally for this post, we have a novel called Shield Of Three Lions by Pamela Kaufman(followed by Banners Of Gold). It’s a historical romance. The heroine, Alix of Wanthwaite, must escape from her home when her entire family is killed. Disguised as a boy, she heads for the Crusades with a Scottish knight - her future love interest - who meets and helps her. On her return to England, she encounters folk hero Robin Hood, who is really not a nice man. He has been conning Maid Marion for some time; she is actually an aristocrat, he isn’t, but has kept her believing his nonsense about being the Earl of Huntingdon(Alix knows the real Earl, the brother of the Scottish king). He has avoided marriage so far by saying he is waiting for the return of King Richard. When Richard has returned, he has to marry her, but there are no child witnesses at the wedding, something usual in a society where not many people read or write.

I read both novels and thoroughly enjoyed them. You can buy them in ebook.