Thursday, August 27, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron


Cinderella is Dead is a YA Fantasy novel from author Kalynn Bayron.  As the title should make pretty obvious it's a fairy tale subversion and in fact, it's very literal about that subversion - the story of Cinderella is not only present within the story but treated as history, not fiction, by most of the characters.  This is not a retelling of the story (for comparison, see Malinda Lo's "Ash"), but a use of its framing to tell a feminist and queer tale of a world that has made use of the story to excuse the setting up of an abusive patriarchy.

And it's a really interesting book as a result.  Cinderella is Dead's setting and characters really do a great job of breaking down how patriarchy's destructive nature spreads and persists despite people knowing its wrong, all the while telling a story that remains hard to put down.  Its main character's determination to find a way to live as she is, as a woman who loves other women, instead of how others tell her to be, makes her incredibly likable and easy to root for.  On the other hand, the book sort of wraps up the major issues posed by its themes in a really short epilogue, which seems kind of like a cheat, even if it makes more sense in a YA novel than one designed for the "regular" adult market. 

TRIGGER WARNING:  Not shown on page, but physical abuse.


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
According to the officially approved tale, 200 years ago, Cinderella married Prince Charming, who would become the king of Mersailles.  Since then the kings of Mersailles, and of the city of Lille, have become crueler and crueler, and more and more restrictive.  Women have no rights, belonging to their husbands or fathers, and young women are forced to attend the King's annual ball, where they can be chosen by suitors.  If they're not chosen after three times attending, they are forced into poverty....or worse, and women disappear all the time.

16 year old Sophie is scheduled to go to the Ball for her first time and her parents are desperate to prepare her.  But for Sophie, the ball is a nightmare, for she doesn't want any man, but her best friend Erin, and is desperate to escape a land that won't let her be who she is.  Yet everyone - her parents, her friends, and even Erin - tell her to accept life as it is and hope for the best, to live even if not in happiness.

But Sophie just can't do it, and when the ball comes, she runs and finds herself in Cinderella's tomb.  There she finds a young woman with ties to the Cinderella story, who tells her that the story is far different from the official version.  Hearing this, Sophie decides just then to make a choice: she won't let this oppressive system, led by the country's cruel King, stand any longer, and somehow she will find a way to break it so that people like her, and even other women not like her, can find not just a way to live, but one that could result in an actual "happily ever after...."
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Cinderella is Dead, as I mentioned before, is a subversion of the Cinderella story, but it is not a retelling.  The events of the story supposedly happened two hundred years prior, with the story memorialized into a book that official law requires that every household memorize and keep within their property.  The official story of course is as we know it, except that after it, supposedly Cinderella grew ill and was not seen again, before dying in the palace. Since then the Kings of Mersailles have built their rule around the story, with annual balls for men to choose women as their wives, among other things....but all of these things serve one purpose: to create a rigid patriarchy where women have no rights whatsoever, and those who don't fit into the classical gender and sexuality dynamics must live in fear and hiding.  It's a world in which men can beat their wives with no consequence and richer men can use their power and status to replace women as they see fit, and it has only been getting worse and worse for 200 years.

This is a rough setting, that is often hard to read, especially in the story's first act, where we are more establishing it than the actual journey our protagonist will take.  And it's a story done terrifyingly realistically, with it being clear that while the King may have pressed this system into being, using his example to ensure that men take after him (and fathers imitating him setting an example for their sons, as exemplified in a particularly horrid family who show up in the plot), many many others are complicit in letting him do so - not taking a stand because the system was put into place slowly without abrupt changes, over the courses of many years.  And the story makes it clear that even among the women of the Kingdom there are people who are in many ways helping the system sustain itself: either directly, through explicit collaboration as shown in a scene by one particular noble woman, or indirectly by being so scared of fighting back and accepting misery that the system persists.  It's a rough rough setting as I said, but it's one that is so extremely believable in today's world.

Into this setting comes Sophie, a 16 year old girl who just cannot let it all stand.  Sophie has known for years that she loves women, not men, and has not been shy about that fact, to her parents' dismay.  The girl she loves in particular is her friend Erin, who has reciprocated but is too afraid to really commit to such a forbidden relationship, and wants Sophie to just let it go so they can both live in the system there is.  But Sophie cannot do that, and she pushes and pushes until finally she breaks, running at first and then desperately grabbing onto any hope of changing the system entirely - regardless of the odds against her.  Sophie isn't magically or physically skilled in anyway, so those odds are long, and while she's smart and kind, she is never overwhelmingly so.  But what she is unstoppably determined - unwilling to accept a life without happiness, and a system that prevents it, and will absolutely do everything she can to change it no matter the cost once she starts on that path.  The book really doesn't have any secondary characters of major significance - Sophie's companion in her quest and eventual love interest essentially has her plot revolve around her for example - but Sophie carries this story tremendously and makes it work.

The story follows some of the framework of Cinderella - for example there's a fairy godmother, but she's not anything like what you'd think - to a small extent, but really it's a quest novel of Sophie doing what it takes to try and find a way to bring down the King and the system and to find personal happiness, which works really well.  The weakest part of the novel is the ending, in which the novel - which has spent much of the page length noting that the system needs to be burned down entirely not reformed and that the people will resist such a thing even if the King has gone - sweeps the cleanup of the antagonist's defeat entirely under the rug in a few pages, making it clear it is difficult to do, but basically skipping that part entirely.  I understand why it did so - it would probably require a second novel entirely to pull off such a story successfully with any depth - but it's a bit of a disappointment after all that work to just run through it so quickly.

But otherwise, yeah, this is a really strong YA novel with strong themes and a really interesting use of an old fairy tale in a very subversive and relevant way.  Recommended.
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