This is a slender novella but it spins a strong and captivating tale. It's funny, sharp, queer, and deeply loves its source material ... These stories don't shy away from ugliness. They don't diminish hardship. Choices people make matter deeply, even when that person seems trapped inside a narrative. For a book about magic curses and world-hopping, there's a lot of hard science talk; this is one of A Spindle Splintered's strengths, as enchantment echoes modern science and helps ground Zinnia's adventure in our reality ... Harrow's writing is always lyrical, but Zinnia's matter-of-fact vinegar, her insightfulness, her funniness and her sense of herself as someone a little separate from the world — since she's always had one foot out the door — makes for a memorable protagonist and a poignant story. Her voice is so easy to want more of; her genre savvy is good fun and never crosses the line into irritating, just as the tropes never become twee or rote. I want more Zinnia. More Charm, Zinnia's stubborn and badass lesbian friend. More Primrose, who sometimes surprises Zinnia and the reader ... unapologetically self-aware, but it is also earnestly romantic. It's an easy read, over too soon ... This novella pushes against the hopelessness of inevitability; it dares us to believe in sympathetic magic; it tells us we're connected through story. It might dent your heart a little, but it's good fun.
... an engaging (if at times overly zippy) adventure that sets up exactly what every fairy tale needs: A heroine who is out of fucks to give ... The truths that they uncover are a keenly sharp commentary that feels both timeless and very much rooted in current conversations about childbearing people’s bodily autonomy ... The novella’s length does dictate some reliance on overly recognizable narrative shorthand, however. For all that Zinnia watches Primrose react to her world opening up, the princess still comes across as the physical embodiment of archetype subversion rather than her own complete person. Similarly, at times Zinnia seems to be purely defined by her snarky nihilism, which acts as the figurative wall of thorns blocking her own access to greater self-awareness. Then, of course, there’s the amyloidosis, which seems to be such an intrinsic part of her that it translates across retellings ... certainly reveals clever glimpses, but Harrow seems to promise even deeper self-reflection in the forthcoming sequel A Mirror Mended, and hopefully increasingly more inspired adventures in the fairy tale multiverse.
Harrow revives and rejuvenates the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale with a feminist twist ... Harrow uses her excellent skill as a storyteller to give agency back to the passive princess.
Sleeping Beauty crashes into the multiverse in Harrow’s queer, subversive, explicitly feminist retelling. This story of power, agency, and sisterhood is recommended.
... overly complicated ... Though intended to be tongue-in-cheek, Primrose’s high fantasy dialogue is cringeworthy at points and Harrow devotes more pages to pop culture references—with nods to both classic literature and contemporary memes—than to secondary character development, leaving some of the alternate Sleeping Beauties little more than flat caricatures. Though Harrow’s ambition isn’t realized, the concept is delightful and the queer romance that arises between Charm and Primrose is, well, charming. This deeply researched fairy tale version of Into the Spiderverse is sure to please Harrow’s fans.
