Book Review: White as Snow by Tanith Lee
Jun. 2nd, 2009 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: White as Snow
Author: Tanith Lee
Published: New York: Tor, 2000
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 319
Total Page Count: 77,670
Text Number: 227
Read For: recommended by Terri Windling in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection, borrowed from the library
Short Review: Captured from her father's sacked castle, Arpazia is wed to the warlord Draco and bears his child, Coria. Isolated and maddened, Arpazia abandons her daughter—but as Arpazia ages to cronehood and Coria comes of age, the two are tied together by their competing, opposing roles. Mixing the fairy tale of Snow White with the Greek myth of Persephone and early Christian liturgy, White as Snow is bursting with imagery that sometimes weaves a complex, symbolic tapestry and sometimes tangles upon itself in an excess of influence. White as Snow nails its voice and setting and is often an immersive read, but the confused symbolism and unmotivated characters hold it back from being all that it could be. In all, a disappointment and not recommended. (Terri Windling's introduction, on the other hand, is a joy to read.)
What Lee writes best in White as Snow is the voice and setting, a combination which brings the story to life: detailed, haunting, ancient, and utterly convincing, the book is a step back in time and into another, more magical world. And so from the onset, and for its greater part, White as Snow feels like a successful book. It is certainly compelling and immersive, and only gets better when Lee introduces familiar mythic aspects: Snow White and the jealous Queen, Persephone's relationship with the seasonal cycle and the underworld, and the temptation of the deadly sins and the tree of knowledge. But as the book goes on, the convincing setting and voice are not enough: it begins to fall apart.
The glut of symbols and myths is ambitious, but overly so: it's an excess of outside influence which doesn't always mesh together. (An example: is the queen's apple the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or a poison, or the gateway to the underworld? Though similar, these symbols are not all one and the same—and it takes more than 300 pages and two characters to unite them.) To compensate, Arpazia and Coria lack motivation, that they are better able to conform to the influences that dictate the courses of their lives. But an unmotivated protagonist rarely makes for a compelling book, and so when the characters are passive figures in the most important events (in particular, Snow White's death) the book collapses in on itself, a victim of too many symbols and not enough of its own plot or characters. I wanted to enjoy White as Snow, and for the most part the writing style and good intentions won me over. But the more I read, the more my doubts grew—and I came away disappointed. It's a good try, but not a success, and I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Tanith Lee
Published: New York: Tor, 2000
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 319
Total Page Count: 77,670
Text Number: 227
Read For: recommended by Terri Windling in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection, borrowed from the library
Short Review: Captured from her father's sacked castle, Arpazia is wed to the warlord Draco and bears his child, Coria. Isolated and maddened, Arpazia abandons her daughter—but as Arpazia ages to cronehood and Coria comes of age, the two are tied together by their competing, opposing roles. Mixing the fairy tale of Snow White with the Greek myth of Persephone and early Christian liturgy, White as Snow is bursting with imagery that sometimes weaves a complex, symbolic tapestry and sometimes tangles upon itself in an excess of influence. White as Snow nails its voice and setting and is often an immersive read, but the confused symbolism and unmotivated characters hold it back from being all that it could be. In all, a disappointment and not recommended. (Terri Windling's introduction, on the other hand, is a joy to read.)
What Lee writes best in White as Snow is the voice and setting, a combination which brings the story to life: detailed, haunting, ancient, and utterly convincing, the book is a step back in time and into another, more magical world. And so from the onset, and for its greater part, White as Snow feels like a successful book. It is certainly compelling and immersive, and only gets better when Lee introduces familiar mythic aspects: Snow White and the jealous Queen, Persephone's relationship with the seasonal cycle and the underworld, and the temptation of the deadly sins and the tree of knowledge. But as the book goes on, the convincing setting and voice are not enough: it begins to fall apart.
The glut of symbols and myths is ambitious, but overly so: it's an excess of outside influence which doesn't always mesh together. (An example: is the queen's apple the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or a poison, or the gateway to the underworld? Though similar, these symbols are not all one and the same—and it takes more than 300 pages and two characters to unite them.) To compensate, Arpazia and Coria lack motivation, that they are better able to conform to the influences that dictate the courses of their lives. But an unmotivated protagonist rarely makes for a compelling book, and so when the characters are passive figures in the most important events (in particular, Snow White's death) the book collapses in on itself, a victim of too many symbols and not enough of its own plot or characters. I wanted to enjoy White as Snow, and for the most part the writing style and good intentions won me over. But the more I read, the more my doubts grew—and I came away disappointed. It's a good try, but not a success, and I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
