Not having read The Glass Coffin before, I had expected a take on Snow White. What a pleasant surprise to read something so different from other fairy tales.
The Glass Coffin just might be the closest example to modern fantasy than any of the Grimm’s fairy tales that we’ve read so far. The imagery in this tale invokes more Harry Potter than it does Cinderella.
The beginning starts out typical fairy tale: a poor tailor sets out into the world to find his fortune. After obtaining lodging overnight, he wakes in the morning to witness a fight to the death between a stag and a bull. The stag then scoops up the tailor and brings him to a cliff where he knocks on a door and the tailor is compelled to enter. Fantastical mayhem ensues.
We have glass bottles filled with blue vapor, the souls of people.
We have a model village, a shrunken town.
We have a princess (technically, daughter of a count) lying in a glass coffin…who wakes all by herself and tells the backstory.
Oh, this story has so many openings for a modern retelling. In some ways, the story is told too late, as all the drama and magic has already happened. Readers prefer to read action as it is happening, not all in a flashback or a spoken reveal at the end.
In this story, the tailor is arriving in the final act to rescue everyone…merely by his presence. He walks in a poor tailor and walks out married to the girl and with a newly revived castle.
Because of the lack of basic story development–despite the fantastical imagery–the story falls flat.
(Short blog today! I’m still busy working on Beauty’s Rose, my Beauty and the Beast novel. Just days away now from publishing it!!!!)
