Read Fairytales Slashed Volume One Volume 1 Megan Derr 9781936202546 Books
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Fairytales never grow old, because there is never an end of new ways to tell them, new ways to see them. In this first volume of many to come, see what happens when a humble blacksmith fights a duel, a prince conspires with bandits, and a lonely thief seeks shelter in a lone tower. See a goblin try to save his brother, and a tutor watch over his perfect princess, while a shy prince braves a mountain in the name of love. See what happens when a runaway prince must be tracked down, when dark rumors surface a gloomy castle, and when a young man saves a little girl, and a lonely soldier hunts down a band of robbers. See a stable boy save his best friend, and a prince save his mother, while a humble gardener faces down a terrible beast and a poor young man befriends a troll. Watch what unfolds when a sad young man is bound to a toad, and a prince confronts an evil witch, and a quiet mage seeks to break a terrible curse.
Read Fairytales Slashed Volume One Volume 1 Megan Derr 9781936202546 Books
"I love this book! The only issue I have are the typographical errors such as ' Volume 4' being on the binding when it is only volume 1, and the random misspellings, punctuation and font errors. The stories however, are awesome and Megan Derr is a wonderful writer. I love the fairytale aspect and how many stories are in the book. I can't wait until the other volumes come out. My favorite thing to do lately is come home from work, get a cup of coffee and read a few stories while I sit on the couch with my dogs. Even though each story seems to have a similar formula, they are different enough make me want to read more. I will definitely be purchasing more books by this author!"
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Tags : Fairytales Slashed Volume One (Volume 1) [Megan Derr] on . Fairytales never grow old, because there is never an end of new ways to tell them, new ways to see them. In this first volume of many to come,Megan Derr,Fairytales Slashed Volume One (Volume 1),Less Than Three Press,1936202549,FICTION / Romance / Fantasy,FICTION / Romance / LGBT / Gay,Fiction - Romance,Fiction/Romance - Collections Anthologies,Fiction/Romance - Fantasy,Romance - Collections Anthologies,Romance - Fantasy,Romance - LGBT - Gay
Fairytales Slashed Volume One Volume 1 Megan Derr 9781936202546 Books Reviews :
Fairytales Slashed Volume One Volume 1 Megan Derr 9781936202546 Books Reviews
- Normally, when I think a book is worth 4.5 stars, I round down to four. Four is still a pretty great score, right? But this one, even though it wasn't absolutely perfect, was enough of a delight that I think it deserves the bonus half star.
I bought this book after enjoying some of Megan Derr's free short stories. I was glad she gave me the opportunity to sample her work, because she proved that a volume of stories is definitely worth the price.
First, a summary. If you're unfamiliar with the "slashed" reference in the title, it means these fairy tales are all about the gay. (If you got that reference, then you're in the right place for sure!) Some of them are completely original, and others are based on the old standards, twisted a bit.
There were 17 stories in this book. One reason for knocking half a star off is that there's no table of contents, and I've always liked when collections of short stories have a little blurb about each story so you know what you're buying. Since this book doesn't have that, I'll do the work. (And Megan, if you read this and either edit this volume or even just put out a new one please? So nice to be able to navigate the version when you want to re-read a story in the middle of the book.) This list isn't meant to be anything other than a very basic overview, by the way.
1. Main Gauche - a peasant-class man signs up for a combat tournament and wins something he didn't expect
2. The Rose and the Fox - a clever rewrite of Sleeping Beauty
3. The Tower - Rapunzel redux
4. Brightleaf - A healer and a half-goblin can't get a sentence out without having misunderstandings
5. Perfect - A tutor for a princess discovers that he maybe doesn't need *quite* so many walls up
6. The Ogre of the Black Mountain - A misfit prince takes control of his destiny...with or without approval
7. The Librarian's Tale - revisits the Rose and the Fox, with cameos! A librarian is forced to hunt for his wayward pupil with a thoroughly unpleasant fellow
8. Rumors - A prince sees a fellow ruler get his just desserts during a layover that coincides with a festival
9. Damsel in Distress - A return of the folks from Brightleaf!
10. The Soldier - A good deed by an AWOL soldier to a man lost in the forest has an unexpected ending
11. Caroline's Bridegroom - A young man sets out to save his best friend. (The only one so far that doesn't have smooching boys. Also set in TRATF's world.)
12. More Precious Than Gold - Rumpelstiltskin, the later years
13. The Rosebush - Beauty and the Beast, but without singing clocks and with more heartstring pulling
14. The Troll - An isolated orphan with young brothers to care for meets...a troll.
15. The Toad Prince - Involves a toad rather than a frog, but otherwise...
16. Prince Ike and the Witch - Finally, we have the ending for the three other TRATF stories! And a good one it is.
17. The Curse - A young mage attempts to help a king break a curse on his lover.
I would have bought this book solely for the Brightleaf/Damsel stories - those two just struck a very tender chord in me. Main Gauche, The Soldier, and The Toad Prince were also particularly excellent. (Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the others; there wasn't one story in this volume that wouldn't have gotten four stars at minimum, IMHO.) If you couldn't tell by the exclamation points, which I normally use pretty sparingly, I *loved* the stories that had cameos from earlier stories; as short as these stories are, I still had time to fall in love with a whole bunch of characters.
Another reviewer mentioned the editing/proofreading as a negative. I did catch a couple of mistakes, but I found them very overlookable. And I'm really not a person who finds overlooking mistakes easy; they tend to jar me out of whatever I'm reading, which makes me crabby. I found this book to be very polished, actually - especially compared to the competition! Another reviewer mentioned the sameness of the characters. I'll admit, now I can see where that person was coming from...but it certainly wasn't so blatant that it detracted from the magic. Honestly, I'm not sure I would have even noticed had he or she not pointed it out.
Most of these stories are G-rated. This book wasn't written to turn you on. (There were a couple of stories that went rather outside the bounds of the standard fairytale kiss, but that was more by way of theme than actual action.) No, as tame as these stories are, the book serves another purpose, at least for me. When you're a kid who grows up different, who doesn't get to see characters like you - even if you're not precisely sure what it is that's so different - reading a fairy tale that not only has people like you, but that's set in a world that treats people like you as so unremarkable... Let's just say these stories filled in a hole I didn't really even realize I had. I'm an adult. I'm far too practical for dreams of Prince Charming and Happily Ever After. But man, reading this book was like being snuggled by a bed full of cats all purring at once. They were irresistibly cute.
I don't know that I've ever read an author who struck me so clearly as someone who was *meant* to write fairy tales. Megan Derr was meant to write fairy tales. You should buy this book and see how good at it she really is. - I have mixed issues with this book. One I really did enjoy the majority of the stories in it. My issue with the book are more technical. Now I'm not one to point figures at people for typos and such; however, I have some issues.
Issue 1 Typos. Obvious typos. Such as things like spaces left out and letters transposed. These are things that should be caught by spell check or simple review. If the author is interested I can point out the ones I noticed. It's a shame these stories contain such pointless mistakes.
Issue 2 Fanfiction is written with spaces between every paragraph. It felt like the author tried to increase the length of the book to make it seem longer by adding a space inbetween every paragraph. So while this book says there are four hundred and ninety something pages. You can probably about cut that in half.
Issue 3 The stories are sweet but unfortunately by the end of the book a lot of the characters start to feel similar. Especially the female characters. Please try and variation on a female character who is not bouncy, bubble and always happy. I love the inclusion of major female characters, I just wish there was more to them.
So that aside. The stories are all very sweet, and there are some very nice twists on the traditional fairy tales and some new elements that I enjoyed. If you are looking for a book that contains sex in any substantive way don't bother with this one. There is one sex 'dream', maybe two and no major sex plots. But lots of kissing. The main theme of the book feel rather like 'true loves kiss', than simply fairy tales. That being the reason that I marked the book more as young adult than anything else.
One of the things that I really liked about this collection of fairy tales was that they were inter connected. Sometimes characters from previous stories would appear in the later stories. Or the previous stories made up the history for the later stories. Finding those little tie in's was a lot of fun. Out of the stories found between these pages there were a couple that stood out more than the others. 'Brightleaf', is the story of a half goblin who's trying to find help for his brother. Of course the only healer he finds who will help him isn't at all what he expects. 'The Troll', is the story of a young man who's parents are dead. Trying to take care of a 'farm' (?) farm as well as his two little twin brothers. My biggest problem with this story is the setting could have been stronger. There is an allusion to the main character trapping and trading his furs but other then that he does chores around the house and chases after his brothers. Slowly he makes friends with the Troll that lives on a near by bridge and eventually breaks the curse that was placed upon the troll--who isn't really a troll. However, of them all my favorite was the last story in the book, 'The Curse'. Centered around a King, whose lover was turned to stone three years previously. Of the course of the story the king falls in love with the young magician who has come to try his luck at breaking the curse. In the end of the story it is this act of betrayal which allows the curse to be lifted. This was a fairly tight story with most of the details working in, though there were still some elements that could have been tied in better. I won't go into detail as to what they were but over all this was a nice story.
Anyway, I think that's really all I have to say about this book. I am rather disinclined to read the other two volumes. While the stories were good. They were not as tight as they could have been. In a short story especially you don't need extraneous details. By the end things felt rather similar and it was easy to see what was going to happen, if the other two volumes are the same... Likewise, I would hope that Megan Derr as edited the previous volumes better. Grammar might not be my strong point but there are some things that are not hard to catch or to fix. Most editors put little squiggle red lines under them. - I love this book! The only issue I have are the typographical errors such as ' Volume 4' being on the binding when it is only volume 1, and the random misspellings, punctuation and font errors. The stories however, are awesome and Megan Derr is a wonderful writer. I love the fairytale aspect and how many stories are in the book. I can't wait until the other volumes come out. My favorite thing to do lately is come home from work, get a cup of coffee and read a few stories while I sit on the couch with my dogs. Even though each story seems to have a similar formula, they are different enough make me want to read more. I will definitely be purchasing more books by this author!
- I grew up reading fairytales, so about 7-8 years ago I was delighted to find 4 collections of gay fairy tales. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Megan Derr's tales. Several--The Curse, Main Gauche, The Troll, Prince Ike and the Witch--were special but the quality of all the tales, but one, kept me reading. The story that is a surprise is "Caroline's Bridegroom," which is not a gay tale at all. There is nothing gay about it so why is it included? The bottom line though is I have ordered Volumes 2, 3, and 4 and look forward to continuing my journey through Derr's gay tales.
- Wow just wow. I love every stories but wished they were longer which tells you of the terrific storytelling involved. Love love loved them. Thank u very much. Totally recommend. A keeper.
- Each story was a credit to Megan Derr's incredible imagination. What I enjoyed even more was how the stories intertwined. As always, I am impressed.
