The inconvenience that might arise, should both potential love interests appear at the same time, is simply avoided – and with that, any conflict that might have made the book interesting. When Ash first meets the huntress Kaisa, Sidhean disappears for just the amount of time it takes Ash and Kaisa to form a sort of friendship. The author really took the easiest route for her love triangle (if it can be called that). If I hadn’t read Malinda Lo’s Adaptation, I might not have noticed at all, but seeing the same thing happen twice in as many books, it stood out to me how only ever one of the “love interests” appears. It’s both boring and annoying to watch.Įnter the huntress. Ash didn’t take any action, unless you count going to the wood to wait for stuff to happen, to wait for others to speak to her, to wait for somebody to tell her what to do. If there’s one thing I cannot stand in a protagonist, it’s passivity. Ash doesn’t show any emotion, except for blushing frequently, and remains cold to Sidhean’s advances. I can recall at least one scene with sparks flying – although these sparks were pretty one-sided. She keeps meeting up with Sidhean in a hinted romance. But as soon as she hits puberty, Ash becomes a blank piece of paper on which the author forgot to write something. A young girl who misses her mother terribly, is scared for her sick father and terrified of the new stepmother, Ash is a child stricken with grief. In the beginning, she is still somewhat believable. Her life sounds pretty damn comfortable to me.Īll of this is made worse by Ash’s utterly wooden character.
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In fact, Ash seems to have a very easy time getting away from home, doing as she pleases – where’s the terrible Cinderella life? Then the story takes a highly convenient turn when stepmother and sisters spend extended amounts of time out in the city – so Ash has even more free time on her hands, which she spends in the Woods, meeting up with Sidhean, a handsome fairy man. Except as readers, we are only told that they are mean and we don’t ever actually witness Ash doing chores. The stepmother and two stepsisters are mean and make Ash clean the house. Her father promptly remarries and, a few weeks later, dies of an illness. Aisling – or Ash – loses her mother at the beginning of the book. The elements that connect Lo’s story to Cinderella are so flimsy and unimportant that they might as well not be there at all. I bought this believing one thing, only to find out I have been fooled. Not because that something is bad in and of itself but because I feel tricked. But you see, when I’m told I’ll get a “Cinderella retelling” and I end up with something completely different, I feel disappointed and angry. After all, there’s no shame in coming up with your own ideas rather than re-hash a well-known fairy tale. Malinda Lo’s book is sold as a retelling of the Grimms’ tale but has so little in common with it that I kept wondering… why wouldn’t author and publisher simply market this for what it is: An original fairy story. If you needed to boil Cinderella down to its essence, that would be it: going from nothing to everything, whether that “everything” comes in the shape of a prince or otherwise. Forced to do all the chores and live as a servant to her family, hers is the ultimate rags-to-riches tale. We all know the story of Cinderella, the girl used and abused by her stepmother and stepsisters. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.Įntrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love-and her desire to live. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. This was kind of a mess.įirst sentence: Aisling’s mother died at midsummer.
There is very little Cinderella about it and the elements that were wedged in felt forced and unnecessary.
Sold as a Cinderella retelling with a lesbian twist, Malinda Lo’s Ash didn’t really deliver what it promised.
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