Monday, December 3, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ash by Malinda Lo



Ash is a middle-grade fantasy novel by Malinda Lo that features a different take on the Cinderella story, one in which the central romance for our heroine is a queer romance.  Middle Grade books, sometimes folded into Young Adult literature and sometimes not, have proven an interesting type of book for me to review: as you might imagine, some of these books feel a bit too childish* for me as an adult whereas others feel like something I think I enjoy as much as I would have when I was younger.

*Note:  I am not using "Childish" here to mean "bad," as much as I mean that adults like myself are clearly not the target audience and will not enjoy it as much.  There's no problem with that - kids and teens need those types of books!  But I'm not going to recommend them to adults.  

 I wouldn't call Ash "childish" by any means, but I did feel like it's a book that I would've enjoyed a lot more at a younger age.  It's a smart subversion of the Cinderella story, although I honestly enjoyed the book the most the further it diverged from the most well known version of the fairy tale.  All in all its a lovely story, but its rather short and the ending felt a little too easy, so while young adult readers will enjoy this, older readers will probably find it cute but skippable.


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
When Aisling - known by her nickname "Ash" - was a little girl, her mother died from sickness.  Her mother was a believer in the old magics and was said to have a little bit of that magic in her, and Ash always believed in her mother's fairy tales, about the dangerous fairies in the Wood, and what they did to their unsuspecting victims.  But as Ash's father - who doesn't believe - remarries and then dies, leaving Ash under the care of her bitter and harsh stepmother, Ash begins to long to be one of the girls in the stories, taken away for eternity by the fairies.  And one fairy man in particular seems to have an interest in Ash - even if it's not quite enough of an interest for Ash as she suffers through what seems to be a miserable life growing up.

But when Ash meets the King's huntress, Ash begins to find something she cares about in life, something she wants more and more.  But Ash knows she will be unable to actually spend time with the huntress without help from her fairy friends, and such help does not come without a cost....
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Ash is as an overall package a lovely story.  Ash is a wonderful alternate version of the Cinderella character, whose life under her "wicked" stepmother is utterly miserable and thus her depression and wish for escape seems so very real as a result.  THere are many the fae/fairy stories where a girl/boy was tricked into a devastating choice, but Ash starts trying to make those choices with full knowledge of what it means, even if she's too young to truly appreciate what possibilities she might be giving up by doing so (hence the conflict in the rest of the book).  And as a result, she feels so real and so easy to care for.

The book does a generally excellent job with the other characters as well.  Ash's two stepsisters are far more sympathetic characters than in the classic tale (with the younger one having some surprising depth), and the other minor characters' reactions to Ash's situation all make it feel far more realistic than in comparable stories.  And then there's the Huntress, whose attraction to Ash and vice versa is done beautifully, such that it's easy to see how the two fall in love.  The only character who's still basically just a cliche is Ash's stepmother, whose wickedness might be a little debatable (she may or may not have killed Ash's father who may or may not have screwed her over) but otherwise just acts as a straight villain with no redeeming features whatsoever.

But she's not really that important to the story, so it doesn't matter - which blossoms essentially into a romance in the 2nd half.  And like I said, it works really well and is really cute to read.  It's clearly a romance meant for younger readers, but it works out quite well.

That said, I had one main complaints about Ash as a book: the pacing.  The book takes an awful lot of time to get setup, spending the first half of the book focusing on Ash growing up and trying more and more to have the fairies take her away.  Anyone who reads the summary for this book knows that the central plot conflict will eventually be Ash's love for the Huntress, but the Huntress doesn't show up for so long that it just feels slow, even if the book isn't that long so the first half isn't that long in page length.  The pacing issue is then exacerbated by the book's conclusion, where the central conflict is resolved incredibly easily, despite loads of foreshadowing of the conflict forcing Ash to make some tough choices.  It's a lovely ending again, but the easiness of it makes all that setup seem kind of a waste.

The result is that Ash is a fine book, but feels a bit stunted overall by its pacing issues, which makes it feel a little less enjoyable for me as an adult.  I'd wholly recommend it to the middle-grade audience mind you, but I've had other books more grab me in a similar vein to what this is trying.
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