Category: Fairy Tales

Adventure, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Graphic Novels

Number 14: A Character with Superhuman Abilities

KC

Grimm Fairy Tales: Arcane Acre Volume 1

Pat Shand (writer) & Andrea Meloni (illustrator)

Graphic novels have gained quite a bit of legitimacy over recent years, so I’m not going to call them an under-rated medium. But what tends to get lost in the conversations about Alan Moore’s books is just how much fun graphic novels are!

It is the written medium that most resembles a movie, and of all the storytelling styles, I find it the easiest to get lost in. The way your eye flows from panel to panel feels more natural than paragraphs. It’s overall a more immersive medium.

Grimm Fairy Tales in particular is cute, and manages to pack a lot of world-building in a short amount of time. I enjoyed it and I’ll probably read the next in the series, but I wasn’t obsessed like I might have by an Alison Bechdel or Harley Quinn graphic novel (which clearly says more about me than the story itself).

Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Fiction, Young Adult

Number 35: From the Villain’s Perspective

KC

A Villains Collection (Villains #1-3)

By Serena Valentino

I realized about a third of the way into this ebook that what I borrowed was actually the first three books in a series, not a standalone novel featuring my favorite villains. Of course by that point I was emotionally invested, and too lazy to download three separate ebooks, so I powered through, and I am glad I did.

My favorite so far is the third one, Poor Unfortunate Soul, the tale of Ursula from Little Mermaid. This story is the bleakest and most nihilistic of the three, but it also seems to be the point in the trilogy where Serena Valentino found her writing groove. The hopelessness of Ursula’s pain and rage fit the tone of the original Hans Christian Andersen story better than Disney usually allows, and it is the first of the Villains novels that felt like it delivered on its promise.

I cannot wait to read more!