The topic of this
month is We Love
Short Shorts! (category romance, short stories, novella etc.)
 |
| Read in Kindle |
Published: 2007
Genre: paranormal
My Rating: 4 stars
In January the topic is a short story,
novellas, category romances and the like. So I looked for something in my
kindle, and there it was, ‘Ember’, written by Bettie Sharpe.
It was in my TBR pile because I saw a good
review, as simple as that.
It’s a funny thing what happens with books.
Same book, same reader, but different experiences depending on the moment to
take that story. For instance, now I’m re-reading novels by Sandra Brown that I
enjoyed a lot in the past. Now I can hardly tolerate some of them. The book has
not changed, it’s me.
When I bought this book, I read a couple of
pages and I didn’t like it. So I stopped reading. I don’t usually DNF books, I
just let them rest for days, or weeks, or months, or years. That’s what I did
with this book.
It was the only short story on my kindle so I
decided to give it a try –again. And my experience was just the opposite. I
liked it a lot.
It’s a retelling of the Cinderella story but
with a twist. She’s not a lovely doormat for her stepmother but a witch, and
far from physical perfection. The stepmother and stepsisters are whores that
wanted to take advantage of her father but, as Ember recognizes they can be
useful for her father as well, they achieve a certain understanding.
And then he dies, and they have to go back to
whoring. Who can help them better than Ember? She’s a witch with administrative
experience. And if these ladies have a wizard at home, it’s obvious that they
do not need a pimp. A win-win situation.
The Prince Charming is more charmed than
charming. It’s a charm or a curse, but everybody likes him. All the men respect
him, all the women desire him. So therefore there was no real feeling for him
in anyone. Even Ember is prone to feel attracted to him. Her mother, who was a witch,
protected her –up to a certain point. But the prince identifies her as the only
person who can really see him, not the image created by the charm/curse.
I really liked this retelling of the Cinderella
story with a wicked twist... Even moments like that of the Ball or the Lost
slippers are told in a little different way. It’s witty and I really enjoyed
it.
It was not a perfect reading, though. There’s a
mystery that you suspect, but it takes a little bit too long to be discovered.
It’s going to be revealed but she runs away. She comes back, it’s going to be
revealed again –and again she runs away. It looked like a way to prolong the
story.
Apart from that I had a little problem with
place names. The magical place in which this story is set is a fairyland
kingdom surrounded by others. In this place, they use –at least for the names
of the places- a disconcerting mix of Spanish and Italian words and Grammar.
There’s another country, the place where the whores came from, that tends to
use French wording. This mixing of different languages is a little bit
uncomfortable for me, as it looks more like grammatical mistakes than fantasy
spelling.
Anyway, it was a great reading and I
wholeheartedly recommend it.
I can’t believe it yet.
I don’t like first person narrative.
I dislike paranormals but -
This –this fantasy made me really happy.
