Genre Fiction
![Alix E. Harrow - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_alix_e_harrow.jpg)
A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables)
USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow's A Spindle Splintered brings her patented charm to a new version of a classic story. Featuring Arthur Rackham's original illustrations for The Sleeping Beauty, fractured and reimagined.
"A vivid, subversive and feminist reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, where implacable destiny is no match for courage, sisterhood, stubbornness and a good working knowledge of fairy tales." ―Katherine Arden
It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one.
Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.
"A vivid, subversive and feminist reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, where implacable destiny is no match for courage, sisterhood, stubbornness and a good working knowledge of fairy tales." ―Katherine Arden
It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one.
Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.
Editorial Reviews
"A vivid, subversive and feminist reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, where implacable destiny is no match for courage, sisterhood, stubbornness and a good working knowledge of fairy tales." ―Katherine Arden, bestselling author of the Winternight trilogy
"An exceptional heroine, smart writing, and a winning plot." ―Nancy Pearl
"It's funny, sharp, queer, and deeply loves its source material...This novella pushes against the hopelessness of inevitability; it dares us to believe in sympathetic magic; it tells us we're connected through story. It might dent your heart a little, but it's good fun." ―NPR
"Like Into the Spider-Verse for Disney princesses, A Spindle Splintered is a delightful mash-up featuring Alix E. Harrow's trademark beautiful prose and whip-smart characters." ―Mike Chen, author of Here and Now and Then
"A wonderfully imaginative, and Queer as hell, tale for those who who wish to be the authors of their own stories." ―Kalynn Bayron, author of Cinderella is Dead
"This is a self-aware, empowered riff on Sleeping Beauty that manages to be thrilling, funny, smart, and sweet." ―Sarah Pinsker, Nebula Award-winning author of A Song for a New Day
"Alix Harrow takes traditional fairy tales, turns them inside out, then upside down, and uses them to kick ass. Brava!" ―Ellen Klages, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Green Glass Sea and Passing Strange
"A Spindle Splintered is a princess story gone rogue. At times sweet and funny, at others bitingly acerbic, this whirlwind tour of fairyland jabs at the old happily-ever-afters ― and asks whether we might want more than a prince and a palace."―Kerstin Hall, author of The Border Keeper
"Themes of female friendship, female strength, and female independence leave good feels behind, not to mention some laugh-out-loud bits...This fairy tale–superhero movie mashup is pure entertainment." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Best-selling author Harrow revives and rejuvenates the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale with a feminist twist in her latest... Harrow uses her excellent skill as a storyteller to give agency back to the passive princess." ―Booklist
"An exceptional heroine, smart writing, and a winning plot." ―Nancy Pearl
"It's funny, sharp, queer, and deeply loves its source material...This novella pushes against the hopelessness of inevitability; it dares us to believe in sympathetic magic; it tells us we're connected through story. It might dent your heart a little, but it's good fun." ―NPR
"Like Into the Spider-Verse for Disney princesses, A Spindle Splintered is a delightful mash-up featuring Alix E. Harrow's trademark beautiful prose and whip-smart characters." ―Mike Chen, author of Here and Now and Then
"A wonderfully imaginative, and Queer as hell, tale for those who who wish to be the authors of their own stories." ―Kalynn Bayron, author of Cinderella is Dead
"This is a self-aware, empowered riff on Sleeping Beauty that manages to be thrilling, funny, smart, and sweet." ―Sarah Pinsker, Nebula Award-winning author of A Song for a New Day
"Alix Harrow takes traditional fairy tales, turns them inside out, then upside down, and uses them to kick ass. Brava!" ―Ellen Klages, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Green Glass Sea and Passing Strange
"A Spindle Splintered is a princess story gone rogue. At times sweet and funny, at others bitingly acerbic, this whirlwind tour of fairyland jabs at the old happily-ever-afters ― and asks whether we might want more than a prince and a palace."―Kerstin Hall, author of The Border Keeper
"Themes of female friendship, female strength, and female independence leave good feels behind, not to mention some laugh-out-loud bits...This fairy tale–superhero movie mashup is pure entertainment." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Best-selling author Harrow revives and rejuvenates the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale with a feminist twist in her latest... Harrow uses her excellent skill as a storyteller to give agency back to the passive princess." ―Booklist
Readers Top Reviews
Tierarztpraxis Janit
Nach den 10.000 Türen..und The once and future witches ist man mit einer Erwartungshaltung an das Buch gegangen, die nur enttäuscht wurde. Was war denn das? Man fragte sich beständig , wo die Story kommt. Insgesamt unsinnig und überflüssig! Schade um die Zeit !
AmznCustmrKindle
If one removed all the pictures this would be 70 pages of text. Not a long story. Not even a particularly interesting story. Seems author was experimenting and publisher said Let’s Make It A Book…and it should not have been.
J. Williford
You’d think after all this time that there were no more variations on Sleeping Beauty to tell. Clearly, Alex E. Harrow disagreed - and to our good fortune. It’s thoroughly charming, even if the author makes a few of her points spindle-sharp. Protagonist Zinnia is a Sleeping Beauty of our own, non-magical world, with an equally non-magical ‘mortal curse’. But even if she can’t become her own self-rescuing princess, Zinnia finds there are more thin lines than she thought; between life and death, between worlds, between rescuer and rescued. A quick and engrossing read, A Spindle Splintered is well worth the story time.
Mercedes J.
I really enjoyed this little Sleeping Beauty re-telling. Suuuuuure, there are a lot of holes if you think too much about it, and a lot of things just do NOT make sense, but that's beside the point. If you enjoy fairy tales and fairy tale re-tellings, then I absolutely recommend this. It's a fast-paced plot that cuts out all the unnecessary 'filler', and just leaves you with a good story. I see it's planning to be a series (or at the very least, it'll have a sequel), which I look forward to continuing on with. Zinnia, Charm, and Primrose are a fun group, and I can't wait to see what they get up to in Book 2.
Berni
I like my fractured fairy tales so I dove into this tale of a sort of Sleeping Beauty. Zinnia Gray is turning 21, which is the maximum number of years the doctors expect her to live as she was born with a disease caused by chemicals tested only on men, not pregnant women. She's been trying to squeeze as much out of life as she can, but on her 21st birthday, she gets together with her best friend, Charm, in their secret place, a tower in an abandoned prison. Something happens and Zinnia gets transported to some sort of fairy tale land and manages to prevent Princess Primrose from pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and falling into sleep as a proper Sleeping Beauty. Neither of these two young women is happy with the fate dealt them, so they seek out the "wicked fairy" who placed the curse on Primrose. But is it really a curse? If you're a lesbian, would you rather sleep for a hundred years, hopefully awakening in a more enlightened time, or would you prefer to skip the long nap and instead marry the prince everyone expects you to marry? The two young women team up and try to help each other. I enjoyed this, but I came away with the impression that Harrow is not aware that this is not new territory. She says in her acknowledgments that she wanted to give the fairy tale the "Into the Spiderverse" treatment. Again, "Into the Spiderverse" was old hat way before it came out. The commonality of the same fairy tale character across different universes has been written of extensively by Seanan McGuire in her two Indexing books, Indexing and Indexing: Reflections. (I highly recommend these.) Her focal character is a Snow White, and she meets up with various incarnations of her archetype. Plus both the big two comics companies, DC and Marvel, have been playing with the multiverse for many decades. DC had so many Earths - I think we are Earth Prime and other Earths had letters attached to them - that in the early 1980s, they tried to clean all this up by their huge crossover even, Crisis on Infinite Earths. Marvel has numbered Earths. The main continuity comics take place on Earth-616. Captain Britain frequently encountered his other-earth counterparts decades before Spidey did. I had not realized when I pre-ordered this that it was so short. I purchased the Kindle version, and I thought $10.99 rather steep for less than 200 pages.
