Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Black Thorn, White Rose

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2019

There may be a couple stories in this book that don't quite grab my attention but on the whole they're all pretty darn good. Really enjoyed The Sawing Boys by Howard Waldrop, which was a retelling of The Musicians of Bremerton with a Depression era Kentucky flavor. Nancy Kress's Words Like Pale Stones and Patricia Wrede's Stronger Than Time were lovely even if the endings weren't what I expected or entirely happy. Tattercoats by Midori Snyder was another really great story about a husband and wife who had gotten so used to each other that they might be taking one another for granted and how a little change of perception makes their marriage new again.

All in all, this book is probably my favorite in the series so far.

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Nathaniel F. Walsh

Great

Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2021

Great

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2017

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The tales in this anthology are wondrous; they sing, they soar. My favorite is the last in the anthology, the black swan.

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Kindle Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2015

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Love this and all books in this collection, Wonderful!

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L Prewitt

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2012

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I am a huge fan of fantasy. Most recently, Patricia Wrede's Goose Girl. It's her amazing contribution to this book that led me to buy it. Unfortunately, I found the other short stories to be unsatisfying. For the most part, they felt incomplete. They were abstract pieces of fiction rather than stories with a twist. Unfortunately, I am giving up on even finishing the whole thing. If there is another story in there that would be appealing to me, I'm frustrated enough that I'm not going to get to it.

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Kindle Customer

One Star

Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2017

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Was really rather silly..Didn't finish

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Mediocre Collection of Fairy Tale Retellings

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2018

“Words Like Pale Stones” by Nancy Kress (3/5 stars)
This was a version of Rumpelstiltskin. It was okay, had some darkness to it and a bit of a twist. In this version the woman wants Rumplestiltskin to take her child away.

“Stronger Than Time” by Patricia C. Wrede (4/5 stars)
A prince asks for a woodman’s help in breaching Sleeping Beauty’s castle. When they find the princess the woodcutter finds the prince is not what he seems to be. This was a decent story and very sweet.

“Somnus’s Fair Maid” by Ann Downer (4/5 stars)
I liked this one. It was a retelling of Sleeping Beauty done in Regency style. It was a fun story with an interesting twist. I struggled a bit with all the characters introduced in such a short story and the story jumped around quite a bit. However, overall I liked it.

“The Frog King, or Iron Henry” by Daniel Quinn (3/5 stars)
This was a very short story about a Prince who forgot he was a frog. Very repetitive and didn’t really like it much.

“Near-Beauty” by M.E. Beckett (3/5 stars)
A sci-fi “Princess and the Frog” sort of retelling. This time the princess falls for the frog. The story was a bit abrupt and was okay but not great.

“Ogre” by Michael Kandel (2/5 stars)
I wasn’t a fan of this one. It’s an off the wall story about a bunch of actors and one of them is an ogre. Didn’t really see the point of this one and could have left it.

“Can’t Catch Me” by Michael Cadnum (3/5 stars)
This was a story about a gingerman fleeing an oven, it was somewhat humorous but very short. I thought it was okay.

“Journeybread Recipe” by Lawrence Schimel (4/5 stars)
This was a clever little poem about how to make Journeybread. I liked the visualization and some of the cleverness in here.

“The Brown Bear of Norway” by Isabel Cole (4/5 stars)
This was a folktale style story set in the modern day world about a girl who is penpals with a bear in Norway. They fall in love and she eventually goes to find him only to find him changed. This is a well written and sweet story with good imagery.

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R. M. Fisher

"You Know the Story..."

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2013

Following on the success of their first collected anthology Snow White, Blood Red , Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling again team up in order to go in search of short-stories that subscribe to their "adult fairy tales" prerequisites. Containing eighteen stories altogether, ranging in length from short novellas to one-page poems "Black Thorn, White Rose" is a nice follow-up to the first volume.

A short introduction outlines the goal of the project: to "give fairytales back their teeth" by inviting a number of writers to reverse the bowdlerization of the original stories whilst keeping them recognizable as fairytales. According to Datlow and Windling: "The literary fairytale, like the music of jazz, is an improvisation on a theme. It eschews our modern obsession with novelty, our insistence on plots that surprise on every page and ideas that have never been uttered before. Like jazz, it is best appreciated by those with an ear for the original melody on which it is based. The pleasure lies in savoring the writer's skill as she or he transforms a familiar story, bringing to it their own unique vision of the tale, and of the world around them.

Despite this common theme, it is an eclectic mix: some stories are straightforward retellings, some transpose the original fairytales to updated settings, some tell the stories from an unexpected point-of-view, and some delve into the psychological depths of the inherent symbolism and themes of the old tales. Sleeping Beauty and Rumplestiltskin are popular choices for adaptation (both of them pop up more than once), but there are also new takes on The Gingerbread Man, The Princess and the Pea, The Musicians of Bremen, and Little Red Riding Hood.

I'll admit being partial to the stories that don't stray too far from the original tale or which get too surrealistic in their treatment of the source material, and since there are too many contributions I'll just mention some of my favorites. "Stronger than Time" by Patricia Wrede is a take on the Sleeping Beauty story that bases itself on the question: "what if the prince was late in reaching the sleeping princess?" whilst Ann Downer uses the same fairytale to tell a sweet little Regency romance in the style of Georgette Heyer.

Tim Wynne-Jones takes the relatively little known "Goose Girl" and tells it from the prince's point-of-view (it may help if you're familiar with the original fairytale) in order explore what he knew and how he felt about his false bride, and Jane Yolen puts a new spin on Rumplestiltskin in "Granny Rumple" by shifting the setting to a Jewish ghetto and giving it a tragic twist.

"Silver and Gold" by Ellen Steiber is a beautiful little poem based on Little Red Riding Hood that explores the allure of the wolf and justification for why Little Red couldn't tell him apart from her own grandmother. Finally, Storm Constantine's "Sweetly Bruising Skin" is my absolute favourite of the collection; in fact I read it twice over just to absorb it properly. Taking the premise of the "princess test" from The Princess and the Pea, the story is not only significantly expanded upon but told from an unexpected point-of-view. The Queen Mother is fond of her young son and sympathetic when he refuses to marry out of duty, so goes to her alchemist and requests that he conjure up a suitable match for him. A few nights later, during a terrible storm, a beautiful young vagabond appears. To prove herself a princess, she is made to sleep on a pile of mattresses to see whether she can feel the dried peas far beneath her.

Yet passing the test is only the beginning of the story. Though the Queen's daughter-in-law was initially languid and rather stupid, she now begins to show signs of cunning and manipulation - and also grave illness that can only be cured by the alchemist. The Queen Mother grows alarmed as to what exactly she's brought into her kingdom, and nobody can be trusted as she tries to get to the bottom of the mystery. In parts funny, suspenseful, surprising and heart-breaking, this was by far the cream of the crop (at least in my opinion).

The difficulty with the anthologies in this series (there are at least seven now) is that the criteria required for a story's inclusion is quite broad. This means that even though each of them are based on fairytales, they differ radically in style and theme. Inevitably, you're going to get some stories that you love, and some that you detest. Had the editors perhaps narrowed the conditions a little bit, there would be more of a central theme running throughout the collection, and a sense of greater consistency. On the other hand, such a wide range of tales raises your chances that you'll find at least one story that you really love, so by all means read for yourself and happy hunting!

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Kelly (Fantasy Literature)

The best of this series I've read yet...

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2001

...Now, admittedly, I'm only halfway through the series. I've read _Black Heart, Ivory Bones_ and _Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears_, liked them both for the most part, and yet this volume (second in the series, chronologically) tops them both. There are so many wonderful stories...here are some of the highlights:
"Stronger Than Time", a poignant take on Sleeping Beauty, sad yet hopeful.
"Somnus' Fair Maid", Sleeping Beauty again; this time it's a delightful Regency romp. No supernatural elements, but plenty of magic.
"The Brown Bear of Norway", a touching teen romance between a lonely girl and her mysterious pen pal.
"Tattercoats"--this is what comes _after_ "happily ever after". The Princess has been married to her beloved for ten years, and their marriage has become a dull routine...but she is going to fight for it, with the help of three magical gifts. Sexy, sexy, very sexy, and also made me cry.
"Godson", in which a young man has the Grim Reaper himself as a mentor. They fall out over whether certain people should be spared. Darkly comic; the ending is hilarious.
"The Black Swan"--seems to be a blend of Cinderella, Swan Lake, and Pygmalion. A pretentious serving-man trains an awkward princess in social graces and gives her a makeover; this story is both a heartbreaking tale of shapeshifting, and a barbed commentary on beauty standards of any time.
And the trouble is, I just know I'm going to think of three more stories I loved as soon as I log off the computer. BUY THIS BOOK. All these incredible stories, and cheap! LOL...

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Elizabeth Donald

Fascinating adult fairytales

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2008

As Datlow and Windling make clear in their foreword, fairytales were not originally intended for children. While I've never minded the Disneyfication of these stories - do we really want six-year-olds watching the ugly stepsisters hack off their own toes? - there is something marvelously gothic that is lost for the adult reader.

BLACK THORN, WHITE ROSE finds that gothic brilliance and twists it, exploring new tales in old stories that are heartwrenching, brilliant and entertaining, almost without exception. A few highlights:

"Stronger Than Time" by Patricia C. Wede retells Sleeping Beauty with a twist even I didn't expect, and a bittersweet beauty undreamt-of by Aurora and her Prince. Try a Jewish take on Rumpelstiltskin with "Granny Rumple" by Jane Yolen, or the strangely compelling "Godson" by Roger Zelazny. Peter Straub disturbs us with "Ashputtle" and its bizarre schoolmarm. "Words Like Pale Stones" is the best retelling of Rumpelstilskin I have yet read, with kudos to author Nancy Kress.

I didn't personally care for "Somnus's Fair Maid," another Sleeping Beauty that reads like a regency romance without the sex. There are many who would, however - it's just that regency isn't my bag. "The Frog King, or Iron Henry" by Daniel Quinn was a bit too repetitive, too circular for my taste, though that was obviously the point of it.

I think my favorite was probably "Sweet Bruising Skin" by Storm Constantine, a retelling of the princess and the pea from the queen mother's point of view - and we can see it her way. But the most heartwrenching is indubitably "The Black Swan" by Susan Wade, who follows Constantine with another story of women's attempts to remain beautiful and the price they pay for it. It closes this anthology with the perfect mix of sorrow and rejoicing.

The key is that each story was unique, a vision of the old stories that is so different as to render the underlying fable irrelevant. They may have been inspired by Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and that poor girl sleeping on the pea, but their execution is focused through the prism of the varied minds brought together in this book. The result is a fascinating anthology, definitely worth your time.

Read the full review in CultureGeek: [...]

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4 star		21%
3 star		8%
2 star		5%
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