A To Z Challenge 2023: Folk Tale And Myth In Fiction - J Is For Japan

 So far, I’ve mostly written about books set in Europe, but there are plenty inspired by Asian mythology and folklore, some “what ifs”.  Today I will just talk about a few I have read, set in Japan orca fantasy version of Japan. 

The Tomoe Gozen trilogy by Jessica Amanda Salmonson was published in the 1980s, but is now available in ebook on Amazon and in audiobook on Apple Books, as The Disfavored Hero. The heroine, Tomoe Gozen, was a real person from the 12th century, written into a fantasy novel full of Japanese mythical creatures. She was a female samurai; I slotted her into an iMovie presentation for my Year 8 class when one of my students asked if there were female knights. There were, in Japan. And if you want to add fantasy stuff to her adventures, why not? I haven’t read it in years, but now I think I will go back for a reread. 

Aussie children’s author Gillian Rubinstein wrote the Tales Of The Otori series under the pseudonym Lian Hearn. They were YA/adult. I admit I have so far only read the first book, Across The Nightingale Floor, but it was an impressive read, based on the premise that, in this alternative world, the spies/assassins we call ninja really could do magic, something believed of them in the real world. They couldn’t , of course, they were just very, very good at what they did. 

It’s set in what in our world would be the Sengoku period, which lasted from about the 15th to 17th centuries. By the way, a nightingale floor was a floor designed to make a noise when you walked across it, a security measure. Ninja had ways of getting across them without making a noise.

If you’re interested it’s still in print and easily available. 

Kara Dalkey wrote The Nightingale for a series of novels based on fairy tales. This was originally a Hans Christian Andersen story. The original fairy tale was set in China. To refresh your memory, the Chinese Emperor is befriended by a small bird, the nightingale, who sings for him and soothes him when he can’t sleep. He then replaces his live bird with a mechanical one, which can’t save him when he needs it. 

Kara Dalkey changes the setting to Japan. The nightingale of the title is not a bird, but a young woman, Uguisu, who plays the flute beautifully instead of singing. The artificial nightingale is another woman, a courtesan who is not what she seems. It is available in ebook on Kindle. 

Aussie children’s author Ruth Manley’s trilogy with a Japanese setting is The Plum Rain Scroll, The Dragon Stone and The Peony Lantern. It’s also the hardest to find, alas, but well worth looking up on secondhand web site ABEBooks - which will keep sending you a notice any time a copy turns up on its list. Despite the fact that the first book in the trilogy won a CBCA Award, it’s well and truly out of print. 

The series is set in a mediaeval fantasy version of Japan. The hero, Taro, lives in an inn with Uncle Thunder and Aunt Piety. Aunt Piety is a fox spirit who runs a very efficient inn, Uncle Thunder is a nutty inventor, who is more than he seems. 

Before he knows it, Taro is on the run from the evil Lord Marishoten, who is after the Plum-Rain Scroll, which only Aunt Piety can translate, to help him in his plan to take over from the Mikado. He is lucky enough to meet Prince Hachi(Lord Eight Thousand Spears). His other companions include  Hiroshi - an umbrella hating ghost(cursed to haunt an umbrella shop), an Oni monster who loves poetry and a girl called Oboro the Cherry Blossom Princess, and her very unusual dog that isn’t actually a dog. The trilogy is very like Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain - even the name of the hero is similar, Taro and Taran, while Oboro is a lot like Princess Eilonwy. So if you liked that series you will enjoy this! 

 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Folk Tale And Myth In Fiction - I Is For Iron

 Iron, as I read on someone’s blog, is “kryptonite for fairies”. They can’t touch it, which is why, in the real world, parents would place something made of iron into baby’s cradles, to avoid the risk of changelings. Mind you, changelings supposedly happened anyway, but no matter. 

Why iron? That might be a real-world thing. The Bronze Age happened, followed by the Iron Age. Weapons made of bronze were not much use against weapons made of iron. The Dorian invasion which probably ended the Mycenaean era is an example of this. In Richard Powell’s Trojan War novel Whom The Gods Would Destroy, Odysseus and some companions, including the children who are the main characters in the novel, go on a journey during which they encounter some Dorians with iron swords. On Midsummer Eve, when everyone is busy celebrating the religious holy day, they sneak over to where some swords are being kept and steal two. Odysseus is not pleased, but gets the girl with them to weave them into the wool of some of their sheep. Later in the novel, the hero, Helios, has a vision of those people with their iron weapons invading all of his world.  

That novel is mostly out of print, but you can still get it in hardback or ebook on Amazon.

There was a belief that putting a horseshoe above your door was lucky. In Good Omens there is a horseshoe above the door at Jasmine Cottage, where the heroine Anathema Device is staying. It glows hot when Anti-Christ Adam Young’s dog, Dog, walks through(Dog is a hellhound).

 

In Pratchett’s Lords And Ladies it is explained that the probable reason for the horseshoe is because it was the cheapest form of iron for people who couldn’t afford anything else to protect their homes. That makes sense!

In any case, there is a lot of reference to iron in this novel as it’s about an invasion by the Elves.  The king, Verence, is stolen away because his fiancée, Magrat, refuses to take the invasion seriously and removes the iron from around a girl she is treating, who is mind controlled into doing what the Elves want. At the end of the novel, witch Granny Weatherwax has the unicorn that has been rampaging around the kingdom shod by the blacksmith, but with silver, not iron, which would be cruel. She is able to lead it into town using a hair, being a virgin, who can control unicorns.

Rudyard Kipling had a chapter on the subject of fairies and iron in his novel Rewards And Fairies. Here is a link to that chapter, in which Puck explains to the children who are the main characters why iron is an issue for fairies. 

 https://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/RewardsFaries/coldiron.html

I do wonder how fairies would cope in our world, in this Iron Age of ours; maybe that’s why we don’t see them any more?

Tomorrow: J Is For Japan 

 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Myths And Fairy Tales In Fiction - H Is For Hogfather And Harry Potter

 

Hogfather is Terry Pratchett’s Christmas novel. In it, Susan Sto Helit, Death’s granddaughter, must investigate the disappearance of the title character, the Discworld version of Santa Claus, while Death himself is covering for him, in order to keep belief in the Hogfather going among children. 

The Hogfather is pretty much a god in this world - you pray to him for gifts,  you offer him sacrifices in the form of drinks and cookies, he rewards you for good behaviour - of course he’s a god! And gods disappear when no one believes in them any more. So yes, Death - a lovable character in the Discworld - takes over the sleigh pulled by pigs, puts on the red robes and a fake beard and flies around to distribute gifts. In the course of the story he encounters Good King Wenceslas(he throws him out of the hut of the peasant who doesn’t want his offerings) and the Little Match Girl of Hans Christian Anderson’s story(he lifts her off the street and sends her to the City Watch station, demanding she be given a warm meal and a bed and throws snowballs at some angels who have turned up to take the dead child to heaven).

It not only has fun with the whole Christmas festival thing, it also messes around with all the mythological stuff, indicating that the Hogfather started as first a seasonal human sacrifice, then a shaman and finally the recognisable fat man in the red suit. If you’ve ever read Frazer’s Golden Bough or Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths, you’ll recognise it, though it probably has no connection with Santa Claus. On the other hand, there are so many different stories from around the world connected with that being, who knows? 

The Tooth Fairy is also a major part of this novel. Tooth fairies in general are ordinary young women doing a job, but what happens to all those teeth? We find out that they are being collected by the real Tooth Fairy to protect children from being affected by sympathetic magic. So, if you got hold of those teeth, you could, for example, stop them believing in the Hogfather…

Oh, and bogeymen are real on the Discworld. They even go to the pub when they aren’t hiding under children’s beds; Susan, who is a nanny, pulls them out from under her children’s beds and throws them out.

There is a very good telemovie of this, with a cameo role by Terry Pratchett in the last scene, as a toy maker.

H is also for Harry Potter. There is probably not much you don’t know about the Boy Who Lived and his adventures, but what about folk tale and mythology elements? 

While she does invent some of her magical creatures, there are many which are part of real world stories. 

Unicorns, of course, which appear in the first book and briefly in the fifth book, Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, where they are the subject of a class in Care Of Magical Creatures(by a female teacher while Hagrid is absent). 

There are also Centaurs, from Greek mythology, who live in the Forbidden Forest in the school grounds. They have their own culture and don’t like dealing with humans(wizards). One who does, coming to the school as a teacher, is shunned by his fellow Centaurs. Astronomy is important to them. The Centaurs of Greek myth are mostly savage people, not too bright, although the wise Centaur Chiron was tutor and mentor to quite a few heroes. 

Dragons appear a number of times. They are pretty much European dragons, with fire connections, though one of them is called a Chinese Fireball. However, actual Chinese dragons, symbols of imperial power, are connected with rain rather than fire. Still, no reason not to play with the basic dragon. 

Buckbeak the hippogriff(Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban) is based on a creature first introduced at the beginning of the 16th century by Ariosto in Orlando Furioso. They are a cross between a griffin and a mare, so have a body partly horse as well as an eagle’s head and wings. I don’t think there is anything about bowing to them, as in the novel. You can ride them, though, and sorcerers do.

The basilisk appears in the second novel, Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. It is a giant snake which travels through the school’s pipes and kills by its glance. It also has lethal venom in its fangs; by the final book, Hermione and Ron are able to enter the Chamber Of Secrets and grab the fangs from its skeleton to use in the battle against the Death Eaters. But in the second book the Chamber and its inhabitant are still very scary, and no wonder. 

The basilisk is first mentioned by Pliny the Elder in 79 CE. From this and later mentions, we learn that yes, the basilisk is every bit as lethal as in the Harry Potter books, but it’s nowhere near as big. It’s only about a foot long. When you think about it, that’s even more terrifying, to think something that small is so lethal. It can burn stuff. If you are stabbing it with a spear from horseback, it can kill you and the horse. Now, that is scary! 

Finally in this post, how about Fluffy the giant three-headed dog who guards the  vault with the Philosopher’s Stone in it? If you know even a little bit of Greek myth, you’ll recognise Fluffy as Cerberus, the three headed dog guarding the Underworld.

Only Hagrid could call a creature like this by such a cute name…

A To Z 2023: Myth And Legend In Fiction - G Is For Neil Gaiman

 If you still haven’t read any of Neil Gaiman’s books, you are missing out - especially if you enjoy myth and legend. 

Of course, there is Good Omens, which he wrote with Terry Pratchett, based on Christian mythology, in which the Anti-Christ baby goes to the wrong family and an angel and a demon try to stop Armageddon from happening. It is, as you might have noticed, a send up of The Omen, but Adam the Anti-Christ is a nice kid. 

But Neil Gaiman has done plenty more in this area. He seems to have a love of Norse mythology. There is his book Norse Mythology, which retells the myths in a highly entertaining way. His introduction explains how he started with the Marvel comics, then went on to Roger Lancelyn Green, who wrote several retellings of various myths and legends(he was a friend of Tolkien, by the way). Roger Lancelyn Green’s Asgard was a Viking hall, very different from the Asgard of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. 

There aren’t many Norse myths still around, because most were written down only after Christianity arrived. In this retelling, Neil Gaiman wrote all the ones you are likely to find in your reading.  

In Odd And The Frost Giants, Odd, an orphan whose father was killed in an accident on his way home from a Viking raid, meets three Norse gods stuck in animal form and goes back to Asgard with them, helping them reclaim it from the invading Frost Giants. One of those, incidentally, had managed to marry Freya, as in the myths various giants were wanting to do. She has made him regret it.

Gaiman has written his own retelling of Hansel And Gretel, in which he uses research about mediaeval famines to explain the children’s abandonment by their parents and the witch’s cannibalism. 

Probably the most famous of his books that uses myth and legend is American Gods. The premise is that the various peoples who migrated to America brought their gods with them - literally. There is a road trip by the hero, Shadow Moon with Mr Wednesday, who is, of course, Odin. Odin has plans for a battle between the old gods, like himself, and the new gods people are worshipping in the present day, such as Media. There are chapters in between the main ones, labelled “Coming To America”, written by the Egyptian god Thoth, who is living in America,  running a small funeral parlour with fellow god Anubis. A wonderful book, and full of myths and legends from everywhere.

This novel is followed up by Anansi Boys, which is centred around the sons of African spider god Anansi, who had lived in America as Mr Nancy and appeared in American Gods, though it’s not a sequel and can be read standalone. He died while singing karaoke at a club, grabbing at a woman’s breasts while falling. The main character is Charlie Nancy, a mild mannered clerk working for a dishonest talent agent. Charlie(known as Fat Charlie, though no longer fat), who lives in England since his parents divorced, goes to his father’s funeral in Florida, where he meets some old ladies who knew him in his childhood, who advise him to speak to a spider if he wants to see the brother he didn’t know he had. He impulsively does so and regrets it. Spider, his brother, got all their father’s godly qualities. He interferes with Charlie’s job(probably just as well for Charlie as he is better able to handle the crooked boss) and dates Charlie’s fiancée, who doesn’t know he isn’t Charlie. He just wants Spider to go away, but it doesn’t work the way he expected and he has to fix it.

This novel takes readers into the world of African mythology, especially the stories of Anansi, who is a trickster god. It has been dramatised by the BBC as a radio play, with Lenny Henry as Mr Nancy/Anansi. 

I see from Wikipedia that there is a forthcoming TV miniseries of the book. That’s something to look forward to! 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Folk Tale And Myth In Fiction - F Is For Kate Forsyth

 Aussie author Kate Forsyth has written a lot of fairy tale themed fiction, but I will just speak of a few here, books I have read and loved. 

Her novel The Wild Girl isn’t about a single fairy tale, but about the Brothers Grimm, collectors of fairy tales and Dortchen Wild, the girl next door who told them some of their classic stories - and married Wilhelm Grimm. There is this idea that they got their stories from wise old peasant women, but in fact, they heard them from middle class young women. In all fairness, those girls probably got the stories from their nurses, but still…

The era in which the novel is set is when Napoleon was making his siblings Kings and Queens. In this case, it was his brother Jerome, who became the king of Westphalia, which was made up of some of northwest Germany, where the Grimms lived. 

It’s a powerful story, with the fairy tales at its centre. It feels strange to think that all the dreadful things people had to put up with under Napoleon were happening while Jane Austen’s characters were rattling teacups in Regency England.

Bitter Greens is a thick-as-a-brick novel based on the fairy tale “Rapunzel”. It is about the historical author of the fairy tale, originally called “Persinette”. Her name was Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force, a French aristocrat. In the novel, she has been exiled to a convent, where she meets a mysterious nun who tells her the story.

In this novel, the “witch” is a former artist’s model in Renaissance Venice. 

The story of Rapunzel is woven in with that of Charlotte-Rose. A fascinating and intriguing novel!

The Beast’s Garden takes the Grimm fairy tale “The Singing Springing Lark” and sets it in Nazi Germany. This fairy tale starts as “Beauty And The Beast” and becomes “East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon”. In it, the heroine marries a man enchanted to be a lion. As usual in this sort of tale, she breaks the rules he gives her and he turns into a bird and flies off. She follows, but when she finds him, he is engaged to a princess who isn’t giving him up. She eventually gets him back via some magical items she was given along the way, handed to the princess in exchange for spending a night with him. But the fiancée drugs him each night to make sure he sleeps and doesn’t see the heroine…

Kate Forsyth’s heroine is an opera singer whose family had helped their Jewish neighbours. She hates the Nazis. She first meets Leo(lion, get it?) on Kristallnacht, when he is there as an SS officer, whom she tells off. However, Leo helps the family and she learns that he is in on one of the attempts to kill Hitler. The attempt fails, of course - they all did - and he is sent to Flossenburg, a concentration camp(a real place, my Dad was imprisoned there). I won’t say more, due to spoilers, but I do recommend this. 

In fact, I would recommend anything by this author. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Folk Tale And Myth In Fiction - E Is For Elves

 Elves are probably the most commonly used characters in fantasy fiction these days, so let’s chat about them a bit. 

Tolkien got them from Norse mythology and gave them an entire culture, languages and background. In his world they are more or less immortal unless killed - in which case they find themselves in the Halls of Mandos, waiting to be dragged kicking and screaming back to Middle-Earth for another life. Mind you, they are quite likely to get killed, given that they fight a lot. Really. 

They can also decide they have had enough and go to the Undying Lands, home of the gods. A few members of other races have been allowed to go there - Gimli the Dwarf goes with his best friend Legolas the Elf. All the Ringbearers are allowed to go - Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee. The ships sail from one port, the Grey Havens, and the last ship left at the end of Lord Of The Rings. 

I want to put in my own thought here and say I think the Minbari of Babylon 5 are Tolkien Elves. They aren’t immortal, but they have a very Tolkien Elvish philosophy - and there is no question they can be plenty murderous when angry! Even Delenn, the Galadriel-like Minbari ambassador on the space station got angry enough to start a war against Earth when her mentor was killed by an accidental shot. But then, even Elf Queen Galadriel was once a very naughty girl, as we learn in The Silmarillion! And there are many Tolkien elements in the show, including a departure for the equivalent of the Undying Lands by the appropriate people - including John Sheridan, the former commander of the space station.

But Terry Pratchett gets it really right, in his Discworld novel Lords And Ladies, which cheekily sends up A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mythological Elves are not generally nice. They can cause disease - I think some illnesses were believed to be caused by “elfshot”. They’re not necessarily evil either - people had the word “Alf”(Elf) in their names - Alfred, Alfgifu, etc. - and they probably wouldn’t do that if Elves were totally evil. They are beautiful and skilled in crafts. There are the Light Elves and the Dark Elves(those live underground). 

But Pratchett’s Elves are basically fairies and the fairies of folklore were downright scary. They had to be appeased with offerings and while they might reward you for help they might also punish you, such as the story of a woman who was called in by mysterious folk as a midwife, who was blinded in one eye for being able to see them afterwards. They couldn’t take a chance on having her able to see them.

There were changelings, usually an old fairy who wanted a holiday being swapped for human children. Unfortunately people took this bit of folklore seriously enough to abuse their disabled children because they thought they were changelings and that this was the way to get rid of their unwelcome visitors. 

In Lords And Ladies, Elves invade Lancre, the tiny mountain kingdom ruled by King Verence, who used to be a jester(and hated it) and his new Queen, the soppy Magrat Garlick, who used to be the junior member of a trio of witches. There is a group of tradesmen putting on a play to celebrate the royal wedding, a big mistake as it helps to let the Elves in, as do a group of local girls dancing in the local stone circle. (One of these is Agnes Nitt, who  appears later in the Discworld series as the new junior witch)

Basically, they are able to invade because no one takes the menace seriously, everyone assumes that Elves/fairies are nice. They are absolutely not. Fortunately Magrat stops being soppy long enough to stand up to the Fairy Queen and save her man.

The Harry Potter series features house elves. They are slaves in the wizarding world, having to serve a wizard family forever, unless they are given clothes. Even nice people like the Weasleys can’t see anything wrong with this, and there is certainly a house elf culture that centres around work; Dobby, who is the closest thing the house elf community has to a radical, likes his freedom but likes work better and refuses all but a token pay and time off, as a matter of principle. 

While J.K Rowling did invent some of her creatures, I think this one is inspired by the fairy tale “The Cobbler And The Elves”, in which some tiny people come during the night to create beautiful shoes and help fix the cobbler’s failing business. When he and his wife make them clothes to thank them, the elves depart.

If you have read enough high fantasy novels, with quests in them, you will certainly have noticed Elves! I admit I gave up on those novels after a while, but I have read enough to know.

Have you read a lot of high fantasy? What do you think? 

Tomorrow: F is for Kate Forsyth. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Folktale And Myth In Fiction - D Is For Discworld And Daughter Of The Forest

 Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are set on a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants standing on the back of a massive turtle.  He didn’t invent that. It comes from Hindu mythology. 

But it works beautifully in his series. Sir Terry has created entire cultures set on this flat world including one which has theories about the sex of the star turtle Great A’Tuin and sends an expedition to find out. 

I will be mentioning the Discworld in future posts, because there are so many of the novels that are relevant to this theme, far too many to write about in one post. 

But he uses the folk tales, myths and legends of this world to build his own. 

The Discworld equivalent of Mt Olympus is Dunmanifestin(The joke of the name is that people in our world call their homes Dunroamin)where the gods live. The head god, Blind Io, is clearly meant to be Odin, with eyeballs that float around his head. A character who appears in a number of the books is a raven who interprets for the Death of Rats. He explains that he used to be one of the god’s ravens till he got on Blind Io’s wrong side because he just loves eating eyeballs…

Golems, which come from Jewish folklore, play a major role in this series, first appearing in Feet Of Clay, in which Dorfl, one of the many golems working in Ankh-Morpork, the main city of the  Discworld novels, becomes a member of the City Watch. In Going Postal other golems become postmen. 

Dwarfs in this world have an entire culture of their own, largely involving bread as a religion and not revealing your sex except eventually to the person you will marry. All dwarfs, male and female alike, have beards. To be honest, they are less about Norse mythology than having fun with Tolkien’s Dwarves, who also all have beards(not kidding, Tolkien even says so!) and make bread for travel, cram. But eventually it all goes back to Norse myth. 

There are a lot more references to folklore and myth in this series, but I’m holding back to talk more about them in other posts.

So, a bit more. D is also for Daughter Of The Forest by Juliet Marillier. Juliet Marillier is a fantasy novelist living in Western Australia. I was lucky enough to attend one of her seminars at Swancon, the annual Western Australian science fiction convention. She specialises in fairy tale adaptations. Most of her fiction is set in mediaeval Ireland(see B Is For Beauty And The Beast). 

This one is based on a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm.  In it, the six boys of a royal family are turned into swans. Their younger sister finds out about it and goes to search for them, but the only way to save them is to knit them shirts made of nettles and, here is the thing, she isn’t allowed to speak while doing it. This nearly costs her life, when she is accused of witchcraft and can’t explain, but keeps knitting all the way to the stake. She does manage to get the shirts on to her brothers, though one is unfinished and a brother is stuck with a wing for one arm.

The novel based on this fairy tale is set in Ireland during the early Norman period in England. It manages, somehow, to make her husband, the young king, more sympathetic than in the original fairy tale.

This story, by the way, also inspired Nicholas Stuart Gray’s novel The Seventh Swan, which is set in Scotland, after the “happily ever after” has happened for everyone except the youngest prince, who has to cover his wing with a piece of plaid to hide it. If it’s still in print I haven’t seen it; I borrowed a friend’s copy when I read it years ago. Perhaps it’s available somewhere on ABEBooks. The Juliet Marillier novel should be easily available, as it’s the first of a series, Sevenwaters. 

Tomorrow: E Is For Elves!

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Myth And Legend In Fiction - C Is For Circe And Cinderella

 Circe was, as you probably know, the goddess who turned sailors into pigs when they arrived on her island, Aeaea. Odysseus met her in Homer’s Odyssey. She turned his crew, but he escaped that by the use of a magical herb called moly. He slept with her, but refused her bed until she changed his men back. 

There is a lot more to her in Greek mythology than this story, and quite a lot of it appears in Madeline Miller’s novel Circe, a retelling of the myth, in which Odysseus plays only a small part. She seems to have been related to quite a few other figures in Greek mythology, including Pasiphae, mother of the Minotaur(her sister) and Medea(niece) and her father, the king of Colchis.

The novel is seen from Circe’s viewpoint, from her childhood onwards. She turns her lover, Glaucus, into a god and regrets it when he dumps her for another goddess, Scylla, whom she turns into the monster encountered by Odysseus on his way home.

In general, though, she is the only decent member of her dreadful family. And she has very good reason for turning sailors into pigs… 

It’s very faithful to the myth. Every time I thought, hang on, that wasn’t in the myth, I checked it out in Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths and found out that yes, it was! 

I know this author has written another Greek myth-themed novel, The Song Of Achilles, though I haven’t read it yet. 

C is also for “Cinderella”. Personally, I think most YA romance novels have elements of “Cinderella” in them, in that the mousy heroine is in love with the “Prince” - captain of the football team or some such - and has to get to him despite the persecution of at least one mean girl. And the girls who read these novels just love it!

There is a play, The Other Cinderella, by Nicholas Stuart Gray, in which Cinderella is dreadful and her stepsisters and stepmother are lovely. The stepmother understands why they are resented - she has been running the household and suddenly she is just the youngest daughter. It’s basically a send up of the Christmas pantomime. A Demon and Fairy Godmother are involved, trying to fix the story. Somehow it all ends up well. Cinderella marries the family page, not the Prince. The stepsisters get the Prince and his best friend.

But my favourite Cinderella-themed YA novel is Moonlight And Ashes by Australian writer Sophie Masson. It sets the story in a fictional 19th century European country, and is based on the German version, Ashputtel rather than the French version, Cendrillon, with which we are more familiar. There is a difference, in that in the Grimm version, instead of a fairy godmother, there is a hazel tree on her mother’s grave which drops her a dress for the ball. The heroine’s name is Selena. She is a “moon-sister” with magical powers. The country where she lives has banned magic except for certain people doing what the government wants. 

It’s only Cinderella up to the ball scene. After that, Selena goes on an adventure - and there are things about the prince she never knew.

Sophie Masson also wrote a novel set in the same country and era, based on Snow White, which I will tell you about in another post.

Tomorrow: D is for Discworld! 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Folktales And Myths In Fiction - B Is For Beauty And The Beast

 Strictly speaking, I’d say that the story of “Beauty And The Beast” goes back at least to the story of “Cupid And Psyche”, told by Lucius Apuleius in his novel The Golden Ass, and researchers think it goes back further, 4000 years ago, but as a fairy tale it was written by a French storyteller called Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot De Villeneuve in the 18th century. 

There are many variations, but let’s stick to some modern retellings. There are plenty of those!

One of my favourites is Beauty by Robin McKinley, which I first read many years ago, though it still seems to be in print. It is a retelling of the fairytale and is a delight to read. Her heroine is actually called Honor, but prefers to be called Beauty. Her sisters are sweet, and asking their father for jewels and dresses is just intended as a joke. Beauty is the strongest and smartest of them, so looks after the family. When she goes to live with the Beast, she discovers his library of books that haven’t been written yet. She particularly enjoys Sherlock Holmes, but does wonder about the technology described in many future books. Like…what is a plane?

When the spell is broken and this alarmingly handsome man stands in front of her, she yells, “What have you done with my Beast?”

It’s a sweet, gentle version of the story and is easily available. 

Another one I liked was Juliet Marillier’s Heart’s Blood, set in mediaeval Ireland. The Heart’s Blood of the title is actually a kind of ink. The heroine, Caitrin, has run away from home and a very much unwanted marriage and got herself a summer job as a scribe to a lord who has a family curse, but not the one you think. He isn’t a beast as such, he had a childhood illness that did awful things to his face. But there are still fantasy elements. I loved it. And it’s available both in ebook and print.

There is an American YA version by Alex Flinn, Beastly, which was also a film. He is a secondary school student, very proud and cruel to schoolmates, changed to teach him a lesson. Much of it is told through a chat room online, in which he is telling his story to other fairytale characters. 

It is available on your favourite web sites! 

Tomorrow: C Is For Circe And Cinderella.

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Folktales and Myths In Fiction - A Is For Arthurian Novels

 There is so much Arthurian fiction around, and besides, I did an entire A to Z on the subject, so I will just talk about a few Arthurian tales I have read and enjoyed. Some, alas, may be out of print, but it may be worth checking them up on ABEBooks, which has an impressive array of second hand books.

Let’s start with Peter David’s Knight Life. You may be familiar with his major work in comics, but he has done fiction as well. In this novel, King Arthur returns, but arrives in New York instead of Britain. He knows he isn’t going to get back his throne, so instead he decides he will eventually run for US President but starts with campaigning for mayor of New York. Merlin, who has escaped from his cave because he is living backwards and is now physically a child, helps him out by faking his records. Arthur collects his sword from the lake in Central Park and finds his reborn knights to help in his campaign. Available on Amazon. There is a sequel, which I borrowed from my local library, but I think this one is much better than the sequel.

The Stolen Lake, a children’s novel by  Joan Aiken, is set in her alternative universe in which the Stuarts still rule Britain in the 19th century. The heroine of this series is a girl called Dido Twite. In this novel she is on a ship headed for a fictional British colony in South America. It is ruled by Queen Guinevere, who is still around after centuries, waiting for Arthur to be reborn. She took with her the lake into which Arthur threw his sword, by freezing it. Guinevere is the villain in this story. I won’t give spoilers in case you want to read it, but it is great fun and easily available online, in both ebook and print. Amazon has both, but you can also buy it in Apple Books.

There are, of course, the wonderful Rosemary Sutcliff books, which are set in post-Roman Britain - The Lantern Bearers and Sword At Sunset, both a part of a series that began with Eagle Of The Ninth, and you recognise that through the heirloom ring which appears in each novel, but these are the Arthurian ones. However, for this post I will focus on those set later.

If you haven’t read Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising series, you have really missed out. There are five books in the series, starting with Over Sea, Under Stone and ending with Silver On The Tree. By the end of the series, the level has risen from children’s to YA fiction. I think the masterpiece of the series is the second, The Dark Is Rising, but they are all classics. There are two sets of main characters - the Drew children, who find a golden chalice while in Cornwall in the first book and Will Stanton, a boy who lives not far from Windsor Castle and discovers he is an Old One, part of a group fighting the Dark, led by Merlin. Merlin is still around, going by the name Merriman Lyon, with a day job as an archaeologist and university academic. Later in the series we meet Arthur’s son, who was left in the present day for reasons you will learn if you read the series. No spoilers here! I am pleased to say this series, first written in the 1960s, has never been out of print. 

If you are on Twitter, there is an annual Dark Is Rising readathon, where people reread and talk about that novel over the time in which it’s set, from just before Christmas till after New Year. There is also a podcast that dramatises it, produced by the BBC World Service. You can listen to it for free on the Podcast app. 

A word of warning: absolutely do not watch the film version! Despite having some well known cast members, such as Ian McShane(later cast as Mr Wednesday/Odin in American Gods)as Merriman and Christopher Ecclestone, best known as the Doctor, as the villainous Black Rider, it makes so many changes, including making Will Stanton American and a teenager instead of an eleven year old Brit, it completely ruined the story for me. But the podcast is well worth a listen.

Tomorrow: B is for Beauty And The Beast.