But Ash still knows her heart well enough to follow it, and when she realizes her love for Kaisa, the realization is so powerful and beautiful that I consider Ash one of the better books to describe the act of falling in love. In fact, it may not even be clear that a romance is brewing, in part because Ash had never fallen in love before and may not be completely cognizant of identifying or recognizing her feelings. Despite this foreknowledge, the romance still manages to develop naturally and organically.
The setup is such that it’s easy to understand how the human world came to coexist with the fairy world, and how humans-but not Ash-can be ignorant of the fairy world.īased on the book description and promotional literature, it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that Ash falls for another woman, Kaisa, the King’s Huntress. We discover how a girl beloved by her parents can end up an orphan controlled by a matriarch who strives for understandable goals with less-than-noble means.Īs grounded and as realistically difficult as Ash’s home life is, Lo also manages to describe the wonders and eeriness of the fairy world to great effect. Malinda Lo, however, paints Ash’s circumstances in believable and grounded strokes. While undoubtedly cruel stepmothers and cruel stepsisters exist, their cruelness in the typical Cinderella tales usually reach caricatural heights.
While the protagonist Ash does wish she can escape the clutches of her cruel stepmother, as the story progresses, she discovers that her dreams may lie with the King’s Huntress rather than any prince or even her handsome fairy godfather.
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