My Top 3 Anticipated Releases of 2018!

I try to take part in Top Ten Tuesday every week and not too long ago I talked about all of the book releases I'm looking forward to this year. I've since discovered even more and today I thought I'd pick the top three books I'm most looking forward to which are being published in 2018.

It wasn't until I compiled this list that I realised that all three of these books are retellings in some way, which I wasn't expecting as I've been staying away from retellings for fear of reading too many and getting fed up with them like I did with dystopian fiction. Since finishing The Lunar Chronicles, though, I've been eager for more retellings that capture my imagination the way that series did.

In 2017 I finally read Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles and it became not only one of my favourite reads of the year but one of my favourite books of all time. I went into mourning after finishing that book and it feels like I read it at the perfect time as Miller's second novel, Circe, is being released in April. Like The Song of Achilles, Miller is giving her own spin on another character from the Ancient Greek legends, Circe, who is considered to be one of the very first fictional witches. This one is my most anticipated read of 2018 and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy!

I've been pretty underwhelmed with the Shakespeare retellings I've encountered recently. Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girl completely missed the point of The Taming of the Shrew and Robin Talley's As I Descended didn't capture Macbeth in the way I'd hoped, but when I heard Tor were publishing a high fantasy novel inspired by King Lear I knew I had to keep it on my radar. I've been getting back into high fantasy since reading and adoring The Goblin Emperor back in 2015 and I'm so looking forward to reading a story about three sisters fighting for the same crown. I've yet to read any Tessa Gratton but I have high hopes that I'm going to love The Queens of Innis Lear.

I'm probably as surprised as you are to see this book here as it's no secret that I wasn't the biggest fan of Uprooted. I didn't dislike it, but it left me feeling a bit empty and took me a long time to get through. I wasn't all that intrigued when I heard Naomi Novik was releasing another fairy tale inspired book until I came across Spinning Silver and realised she'd written a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin. Rumpelstiltskin just so happens to be my favourite fairy tale, I read it so many times when I was younger, and I have been waiting for a retelling for the longest time. I might not have enjoyed Uprooted as much as I wanted to, but I'm hoping to love this one! (I'm also hoping we might have a different cover in the UK that matches the UK cover of Uprooted).

Which books are you most looking forward to this year?

Once Upon A Time... | 2015 Fairytale Challenge

This year I'm taking part in The Daily Prophecy's Fairytale Challenge, which is basically a challenge to read as many retellings as you can/want. This month Mel has given us the fun challenge of talking about our earliest memory regarding fairy tales and why we love fairy tales and retellings so much!

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales."

~ Albert Einstein

I know this is a huge cliché in the reading world, but I can't remember not being able to read. I'm not trying to say that I emerged from the womb a literary genius, but that my parents read to me each night from such an early age that I was destined to be a book lover. My Dad, in particular, didn't grow up in a family that read much, so I think he really wanted to instil a love of books in me.

When I was little I was raised on fairy tales; whether it was the Brothers Grimm, Disney, or Hans Christian Andersen, it didn't matter, I loved them all! My earliest memories of fairy tales stem back to when I was around five years old, and I had a little collection of Ladybird Books that I loved. I often took them into school to show my friends, and I was very protective of them.

My priorities haven't changed much.

Other than the little book I had that was all about the human body - I remember that book convinced me we were all cyborgs for a while because it described the body as a 'marvellous machine' - the three fairytales I remember reading the most are Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel and The Little Mermaid.

These stories fascinated me because they didn't shy away from that dark edge that so many of our old stories have. As much as I love Disney (and Disney's Beauty and the Beast is still my favourite film of all time!) I never owned the Disney storybooks; I watched Disney, but I read the Brothers Grimm. 

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

~ Neil Gaiman

I'm pretty sure this was the edition I had!

Rumpelstiltskin was, and probably still is, my favourite fairy tale. I love how creepy it is, and even though Rumpelstiltskin himself gave five year old me the heebie jeebies he still interested me.

I also loved Rapunzel - as amazing as Tangled is (I'd much rather watch that than Frozen) the original is pretty darn cool - and Snow White and Rose Red. In fact growing up with two older sisters meant I often had a fondness for stories featuring sisters. There's one story in particular I'd love your help with!

There's a story I can remember from my childhood but I can't remember what it was called and, if I'm completely honest, I can only remember the beginning and the end (and not the important bit in the middle!), and what makes it all the more frustrating is that no one else seems to have heard of it. 

The story features two sisters and their mother. The mother and one of the sisters are awful people. They're wicked and cruel, so much so that whenever her daughter speaks a toad falls out of her mouth. The other sister is nothing like her family; she is beautiful, loving and kind, so much so that whenever she speaks a drop of gold falls out of her mouth. After that I forget what happens (really helpful, I know) but I do remember that by the end of the story the kind daughter has married the Prince, and her mother and sister are punished for their wickedness by being put in barrels lined with iron nails and rolled down a hill.

Please tell me someone knows the story I'm talking about, because I've been searching for it for years!

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

~ C.S. Lewis

When I was seventeen my love for fairy tales, somewhat quashed by puberty and the feeling that I should have grown out of them by now, was rekindled when myself and seven others put on a production of three of the Grimm's Fairy Tales for our Drama A Level. We performed Rumpelstiltskin, Little Red Cap and Hansel and Gretel, and it was fantastic; each story was around 5-10 minutes long, and we performed them all while dressed as a selection of macabre toys!

Since then I haven't let myself shy away from my love of fairy tales. In fact luckily for me I wound up studying retellings during my first year of university when we looked at Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories and Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories. During my second year of university I was introduced to literary theory, and did a project on postmodernism and fairy tales/mythology. In my third year one of my friends worked on a really interesting dissertation about how all modern day horror films can be traced back to the Brothers Grimm, while my dissertation argued that many dystopian stories can be traced back to theology and the story of the Fall.

Needless to say, I'd been waiting for the bandwagon long before it rolled around when retellings became the next literary trend and, luckily for us, they're going to be a trend that sticks around. For as long as there are fairy tales and folk tales there are going to be new ways to tell them, because there's a reason we still read these stories to our children, there's a reason why we still learn from them. They're part of our culture; Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm didn't stay in their rooms and think of all these stories themselves, they travelled around Europe and collected these stories from communities who thrived on the art of oral storytelling, and for whom these stories were lessons as much as they were entertainment. 

"Fairy tales represent hundreds of years of stories based on thousands of years of stories told by hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of tellers."

~ Kate Bernheimer

It's the same with The Thousand and One Nights, The Sagas and The Mabinogion - tales from West and South Asia, Scandinavian and Germanic history, and Celtic Wales respectively - all of the stories were told around campfires long before they were written down, and if a story can survive so long without ever making a mark upon a page, just imagine how long they're going to be around now that we've written them down.

From Cinder to Wicked to Cruel Beauty, we're in the middle of a Fairy Tale Renaissance, and as long as there are retellings to read I'll read them, but I'll always return to my first love: the Grimm's Fairy Tales.

"If I'm honest I have to tell you I still read fairy tales and I like them best of all."

~ Audrey Hepburn

The 2015 Fairytale Challenge!

Throughout 2015, Mel from The Daily Prophecy will be hosting the Fairytale Challenge!

• The challenge runs from January 1st to December 31st 2015
• The goal is simply to read retellings (fairytale or not!) throughout 2015. The book doesn't have to be published in 2015 and rereads count! 
• There are 6 different levels you can aim for:
  - Prince Charming (1 - 4 Books)
  - Magic Mirror (5 - 9 Books)
  - Big Bad Wolf (10 - 15 Books)
  - The Wise Princess (16 - 20 Books)
  - Wicked Fairy Godmother (21 - 25 Books)
  - Bluebeard (26+ Books)

You can join this challenge up until December 31st 2014 by leaving a link to your introduction post here!

I grew up on Grimm's Tales, so I've loved fairytales and fairytale retellings for years. So, naturally, I just had to take part in this challenge. I won't be limiting myself to just fairytale retellings, as much as I love them, because there are so many amazing retellings out there that focus more on folk tales and even classics and I want to read as many of them as I  can!

Here are the retellings I'd like to read in 2015:

Fairest

by Marissa Meyer

Winter

by Marissa Meyer

Retelling of: Snow White

For Darkness Shows the Stars

by Diana Peterfreund

Retelling of: Persuasion

Of Beast and Beauty

by Stacey Jay

Retelling of: Beauty and the Beast

The Mirk and Midnight Hour

by Jane Nickerson

Retelling of: Tam Lin

Faery Tales

by Carol Ann Duffy

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monster

by Ben H. Winters

Retelling of: Sense and Sensibility

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club

by Genevieve Valentine

Retelling of: The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Warm Bodies

by Isaac Marion

Retelling of: Romeo and Juliet

Cruel Beauty

by Rosamund Hodge

Retelling of: Beauty and the Beast

&

New Stories from The Mabinogion

This month I started my new job at Seren Books, an independent publisher in South Wales, who over the past few years have published retellings of the eleven stories in The Mabinogion, old Welsh folk tales based on Celtic mythology, and in 2015 I'm going to try and read them all! I'm particularly eager to read The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis, White Ravens by Owen Sheers, and The Prince's Pen by Horatio Clare.

If I saw even one other person read a Mabinogion retelling I'd be thrilled; it'd be wonderful to see everyone reading retellings that aren't the typical Grimm's Fairy Tales retellings.

If you'd like to know more about the New Stories from The Mabinogion series, you can find out more here!

Are you taking part in the challenge throughout 2015?

Jess Suggests | Sci-Fi Retellings! | Sci-Fi Month 2014

I have a science fiction retelling (the first one on this list!) to thank for my first extremely positive experience with science fiction. As I've already mentioned this month science fiction was a genre I felt so intimidated by until I read Cinder, which really made me see the genre in a different light. 

So, in honour of the book that helped me overcome my fear of sci-fi, today I'm recommending four books which are all retellings, and all science fiction!

Cinder

by Marissa Meyer

Retelling of: Cinderella

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. 

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Warm Bodies

by Isaac Marion

Retelling of: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

'R' is a zombie. He has no name, no memories and no pulse, but he has dreams. He is a little different from his fellow Dead.

Amongst the ruins of an abandoned city, R meets a girl. Her name is Julie and she is the opposite of everything he knows - warm and bright and very much alive, she is a blast of colour in a dreary grey landscape. For reasons he can't understand, R chooses to save Julie instead of eating her, and a tense yet strangely tender relationship begins.

This has never happened before. It breaks the rules and defies logic, but R is no longer content with life in the grave. He wants to breathe again, he wants to live, and Julie wants to help him. But their grim, rotting world won't be changed without a fight...

For Darkness Shows the Stars

by Diana Peterfreund

Retelling of: Persuasion by Jane Austen

It's been several generations since a genetic experiment gone wrong caused the Reduction, decimating humanity and giving rise to a Luddite nobility who outlawed most technology.

Elliot North has always known her place in this world. Four years ago Elliot refused to run away with her childhood sweetheart, the servant Kai, choosing duty to her family's estate over love. Since then the world has changed: a new class of Post-Reductionists is jumpstarting the wheel of progress, and Elliot's estate is foundering, forcing her to rent land to the mysterious Cloud Fleet, a group of shipbuilders that includes renowned explorer Captain Malakai Wentforth--an almost unrecognizable Kai. And while Elliot wonders if this could be their second chance, Kai seems determined to show Elliot exactly what she gave up when she let him go.

But Elliot soon discovers her old friend carries a secret--one that could change their society . . . or bring it to its knees. And again, she's faced with a choice: cling to what she's been raised to believe, or cast her lot with the only boy she's ever loved, even if she's lost him forever.

Of Beast and Beauty

by Stacey Jay

Retelling of: Beauty and the Beast

In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to both their worlds.

Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.

As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight, which vanished during her childhood, returned, Isra will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.

Have you read any of these retellings? Are there any other retellings you'd recommend?