Mirror Mirror : A Terrible Retelling Of A Classic

Mirror Mirror Smoothie Review

For the longest time by best friend has been trying to get me to read Wicked. The darker the Wizard of Oz centered on the wicked witch. But considering I had so much to read already, I never got a chance to. But years later I got a free copy of the book Mirror Mirror, which happened to be darker more realistic tale of Snow White, written by the same author who wrote Wicked, Gregory Maguire. I know its not the famous “Wicked” but I thought that whatever charm this author had may translate into his version of Snow White.

So what is it about? Well it is the tale of Snow White. The setting is slightly different set in the back drop of a fractured and at war Italy of the 1500s. The tale itself focused on Bianca de Nevada who is a helplessly isolated girl who lives on a bit of farmland called Montefore. There she lives with her father, a elderly caretaker, and a priest. Things changed when a couple siblings, a daughter and son of the pope come to ask a impossible task of her father. They force him to take a quest to find the apple of Eden as Lucrezia (the pope’s daughter) is to stay behind to watch over the estate and Bianca de Nevada. Lucrezia fills in as the wicked step mother and surely it can be assumed from there where the story is going.

So now the good and bad? Sadly, I have to start with the bad because there is so much of it. The first big complaint about the book is that it is not the so called “darker” version this supposed to be. I feel that the author needs to look up the word “dark.” because for this book I feel he went for shock value trying to make things supposedly dark. Let list the things that he added to the tale of Snow White to make it darker, heavy doses of incest, child rape, a old woman who loves to have sex with a squid, a very disgustingly detailed scene about Bianca’s first period and the list goes on. All of this portrays all of it in a fashion of “Oh my god!” shock value. All of which has nothing to do with the story and many of the scenes concerning those points comes up as a “Yuck I didn’t need to read that” rather than “This story is so dark.” The tone was just very awkward more than anything else as this would come up randomly without any reason. The detail is poor. So poor that there are pages when it is hard to know what is going on or where they are. There are chapters that randomly jump to first person but failed to address who’s point of view it is coming from and from the detail in the chapter I failed to even have a good guess of who it is coming from. The characters are shallow. The one that is the most detailed is the villain and she still has very little to offer. The character who fills in as the prince is barely there and acts so oddly, that I got a sense that he was handicapped. Bianca is helpless to a fault making her step backward from strong female leads. Her role in this, is beauty and stupidity. Her story is both embarrassing and depressing. And don’t get me started on plot holes. That’s a topic for another whole essay.

The good? I give the rather credit for putting up a effort, but it is done so badly. Nothing here is good. People are better reading the old fairy tale because he has nothing new to offer at all. The only creepy element was a single scene. Soldiers who came back from war had the ‘rot.” The rot, was a infection that made the men decay while alive in a since. Very creepy stuff that’s only mentioned once.

Overall this book is a disaster. It should be avoided. And after reading this, I have no intention of reading anything else by this author. Not even Wicked.

½ smoothies out of four.

Overall rating: A Terrible Retelling Of Snow White.

P.S. If you like books then check out my book and ebook website Lelue’s Realm. Google it or go directly to http://www.freewebs.com/lelue/

Fire at The Center: An Old Fashioned Scifi Tale Missing a Purpose

Fire at the Center BY Geo. W. Proctor

This is another book giveaway gem. This one, I just grabbed for the hell of it. It’s a ancient paperback featuring image of a dinosaur in chains, and astronauts on the cover. And as crazy as it sounds, I figured it could be fun. Plus its a science fiction novel and as much as I like science fiction, really good books are hard to find. So I gave it a chance. It’s called “Fire at the Center” by Geo. W. Proctor.

So what is it about? Well its set in the far future where the human kind has populated many planets, yet human kind is divided. One side are a bunch who believe that a united dictatorship like government should rule everything. Of course it is a scifi space opera tradition and the faction have silly names I can’t remember. Then there’s group two with another silly name that makes up of free independent. The story focuses on Kendlers a man who is a member of the free thinking side who works for psi corps agency that uses psychics for multiple purposes. Kendler can read and take over minds. After returning from a time travel trip on earth to help scientists study a dinosaur he receives a new assignment. He is given a partner to investigate odd events on another planet. People are randomly going insane for no reason for hours at a time. They must sneak in, as silly name group number one suspect that Kendlers’ silly name group is at fault. So they must spy on others to find this source.

So the good? Well I must say its imaginative. I always like that. But one thing I must give them credit for is explaining everything thoroughly. These space things always lose me, because I don’t care about the politics, space crafts, ray guns and star fighting. I feel that it just did the right thing by staying focused in a realistic manner and telling the reader only what is important. The author also goes through the trouble to add detail and explain the scifi elements in the story to allow the readers to understand what it is like.

The bad? Well this story has too many ideas. Its short two hundred page read and the author tries to shove way too many topics in one book. It would have worked better if he focused on one and elaborated on it. Also the pacing is weird. The beginning with the time travel was long, extended with a lot of action, and character development and detail. Yet the most interesting part, the investigation with strange riots was extremely rushed, which was quite disappointing with little detail at all. And at the end was rushed even more taking place in twenty five pages. Overall the story starts off with a great concept but the wanders around aimless, back and forth between a lot of concepts with no real sense of story progression what so ever.

Overall, the writing it self is confident but the story seems t have little purpose. It saves itself because it does not fall into the world of nerdy star wars or star trek, but it just didn’t live up to its potential like it should have.

Overall Rating: A old school space opera missing a purpose

2 smoothies out of four.

P.S. If you like books then check out my book and ebook website Lelue’s Realm. Google it or go directly to http://www.freewebs.com/lelue/