Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul

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Her work has appeared in Literary Orphans, Agave Magazine, Gravel Literary Journal, Monkeybicycle, Foliate Oak, MusePiePress, Dying Dahlia Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Eunoia Review, Corvus Review, After The Pause and elsewhere. I thought this would be the perfect poetry collection for me but Gill’s interpretations of fairytales/folklore and creative choices as a whole didn’t connect with me at all. This is filled with poetic retellings and short stories of fairy tales, as well as a few original tales. Generally I enjoy fairytale retellings and a couple of these had some nice turns-of-phrases, which would get me thinking.

Those that especially caught my eye included the image preceding A Tale Of Two Sisters, and the image relating to The Looking Glass. Maybe magic ends with me and it will never cross your path, but I want you to remember that survival is an art. It's too bad because many of the poems near the beginning of this compilation are solid, strong takes on known stories.What if I told you, the step sisters struggled with insecurities, body image issues and were trying to keep up with societal standards of perfection and that jealousy is not a inherent trait? The language is great, all the self-love poems are fabulous, and I found so many good nuggets to remember for later. For me, the collection was great, but I think I am the type of reader that needs to spread this out a lot more over time.

I’m 100% in favor of encouraging young women, but her advice became repetitive and ponderous by the twentieth tale. This book explored themes of abuse and self-love, how women as well as men can be toxic, and how it is your own business how you decide to heal- and that healing and becoming yourself again is a form of magic in its own right. This book is an attempt to re make patriarchal fairytales into feminist and female positive remasterings.What if I told you, that the prince charming was asked to 'man up' at every stage, be strong and unfaltering all of which led to repressed emotions with dangerous consequences ? This is one reason I highly recommend the print over the audio, unless you do both, as you miss the drawings in the audio version.