A Story Musing: A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow

 

A Mirror Mended

by Alix E. Harrow

Our book club theme this past month was “A Fairy Tale Retelling.” Alix Harrow has been one of my favorite writers of the past few years with books like The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches. Harrow’s writing is vivid with detail and energy. Her heroine’s have a great amount of agency in affecting how the story moves forward. Things don’t just happen to them, they make them happen.

A Mirror Mended is the continuation of an LGBTQ retelling of fairy tales that began with A Spindle Splintered. “Zinnia Gray has always been fascinated by Sleeping Beauty because she has a mystery illness. No one who has it has survived past their 21st birthday. Her best friend creates a Sleeping Beauty themed party for her on her 21st birthday. Of course, her story doesn’t end there, and Zinnia finds herself in a fight, not only for her life, but other sleeping beauties as well. I can’t recommend this one enough. It’s short and sweet, and beautiful and courageous.” https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2022/06/reading-lgbtq-books.html

This book picks up the story from A Spindle Splintered. Zinnia is able to jump from one dimension to another, and different versions of fairytales, through mirrors, to help people in other fairytales escape the doomed narrative.

There’s a certain aspect to this that reminds me of the funny space adventure movies I’ve seen where the hero or heroine is jumping from one adventure to another. She’s a swashbuckling heroine from my perspective, told in the first person with a strong sense of voice.

“You might think interdimensional travel is difficult or frightening, but it’s usually not that bad.” But this time is much worse than usual. “Maybe my conviction that my organs are turning themselves inside out is just a really shitty hallucination.”

This time Zinnia makes contact with yet another girl for help, but it turns out to be the evil queen. However, the evil queen isn’t quite as evil as the storytellers would have you believe, and Zinnia falls for the Evil Queen, who she dubs Eva.

This actually seems to be more of a Little Red Riding Hood story with a particularly horrific bend. But, again, this is not your usual Red, and there’s a science fiction feel there too.

As always, the writing is vivid with details, funny, and thought provoking. It’s not your typical fairy tale though it does retain some elements, like a happy ending, of a kind. I highly recommend.