This book is nominally set in the Grishaverse, but is all the fairy tales they would tell there. You can definitely see the parallels to tales in our normal world.
My favorite story was “Ayama and the Thorn Wood”, which is sort of a cross between “Cinderella” and “Beauty and the Beast”. The younger son of the king was born a beast, and has escaped his confinement, and is slaughtering livestock and people in the countryside. Ayama, a younger sister of the girl who everyone thinks should be a princess, ends up being the one person that can reason with the beast. I really loved how this tale ended – it’s a great twist on this story.
The last story, “When Water Sang Fire” is a take off on “The Little Mermaid”, and I wasn’t as fond of that one. What mainly interested me is that this is the second or third time I’ve now run into stories that were very clearly influenced by the Disney version of this tale – interesting how that’s clearly now a cultural touchpoint.
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