Fantasy with Friends: Fairytale Retellings

It’s Monday, and that means Fantasy with Friends! The prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, and this time we’re talking about fairytale retellings: Do you like reading fairy tale retellings? What, in your opinion, makes a good retelling? Broadly speaking, yes! I find retellings fascinating, because what the author chooses to keep the same and what they choose to change tells you a lot. Sometimes they’re pure nostalgia, basically little different from the Disney movie adaptations, and that’s an interesting choice too — sometimes it can be pretty fun and cosy, other times it just feels kinda repressive. Obviously it’s not just an academic curiosity, though that’s there too: I enjoy fairytales in general because they have a familiar shape, so you know roughly what you’re expecting. If the author leans into that, it can be comforting; if they don’t, then you get the fun of trying to guess where it’s going exactly, where it’s going to echo the original and where it’s going to depart. Some…