Review: Twice Upon a Time, Edited by Joshua Allen Mercier

Twice Upon a Time is a brilliant new anthology, featuring some very clever retellings of fairy tales, folklore and ancient myths and published by the Bearded Scribe Press. Fairytales, folklore and myths are, of course, tales designed to educate us on everything from the changing of the seasons, to morality tales on how to live right. Each story in Twice Upon a Time puts a new twist onto this old theme. The authors are as diverse as the stories (and their new settings,) themselves. There are some debut authors, along with some more established names. My personal favourites were Forbidden Fruit (a clever retelling of The Red Shoes,) while The First Day of Winter was a wonderful re-imagining of The Selkie Bride (the latter already being one of my favourites from Clarissia Pinkola Estes' brilliant Women Who Run With the Wolves.) Another great highlight was Tarran Jones' All That Glitters, a retelling of Brothers Grimms The Silver Hands.

At 706 pages (much the same size as my own, old copy of Grimms Fairy Tales,) Twice Upon a Time took me a little while to get through. I soon found that I enjoyed it best when reading just one or two stories in a sitting, as this gave them maximum impact. (I often find that if I read three or more short stories in a row, that they begin to blend together and lose some of their impact.) Anyway, if you love fairytales and retellings, this one deserves a place on your bookshelf, or a spot on your eReader.

Thank you to Joshua Allen Mercier for my electronic ARC and also to Tarran Jones for signing my print copy (in gold, no less, which I thought was a lovely touch.)


This book was read as part of the Eclectic Reader Challenge 2015 

Category: Retellings

Progress 4/12

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