White as Snow, by Tanith Lee

[othercat]

I tend to have a love-hate relationship with Tanith Lee’s writing. I find her to be very readable on occasion, but all of the rapes, craziness and death tend to stand between the plot of the book and my liking of it. White as Snow is part of Terri Windling’s Fairy Tale Series and the blurb declares that it is a “dark sensual retelling of Snow White,” and I would have to say that they were at least half right (which is to say, it is dark).

We begin the story with a girl named Arpazia. Arpazia is a noblewoman whose home is about to be destroyed by an invading army led by a warlord named Draco. Draco rapes Arpazia, finds Jesus and decides to marry her. Arpazia is pregnant, suffering from the trauma of having been raped and then married to her rapist and takes a dive off the deep end of insanity. She develops an obsession with an ornate mirror and completely rejects her baby when it is born. Since these are pseudo-medieval rubes, the entire palace decides that Arpazia is an evil witch and engage in victim-blaming.

The daughter grows up mostly forgotten by both parents (which is more or less a good thing since Arpazia is crazy and Draco is a stupid lump of talking meat). Her name is Candacis, though her nurses all call her Coira.

White as Snow

Comments

[future_guardian]

It's really weird reading a review of this book seven or so years after I read it, and remembering most of this stuff. Except I don't remember all the details (part of the problem was, I read this when I was maybe thirteen). Maybe if it's inexpensive I'll get a copy for my ereader and see if my mind changed since I'm older.

However, loved the overview and I think it hits on the biggest problems I had with this book my first time reading it. I guess we were supposed to like the female leads, but I'm not sure because nothing they did was sympathetic or appealing and...Were they even supposed to be liked? The ending of the book was kind of a "What?" moment. *Possible Spoilers* If I remember correctly, the daughter's mother is tortured to death and the daughter marries (?) the man who set it all up. *End of Spoilers* I was left wondering what the point of the book was, because all I saw was "Daughter makes same choices/mistakes mother made". Most frustrating was that I think this woman usually writes good stuff (again, thirteen when I was into her so not entirely sure anymore) and this was not her best work.

[alicetheowl]

You share a lot of my observations when I was reading a while back. It seemed to me like the characters were being pulled along on the plot and behaving the way they did because the plot demanded it, not because they chose to.

I'd heard such wonderful things about this book, and I had such high hopes. Alas.