Mirror Mirror

I liked Wicked, I even liked Son of a Witch. Then I started moving into Gregory Maguire's fairy tales. I liked Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister but Mirror Mirror? Not so much.

First, I'm not a big fan of historical fiction. I like stories written as if they were historical fiction, I just don't like being expected to know any actual history. It's not one of my subjects. So when Mirror Mirror drapes itself around events of 16th century Italy I have no clue what's going on. I know something of the Borgias (in that I recognise the name) but I couldn't tell you what they meant to the politico-social environment of Italy. I would have had to do research to read this book. Maybe I'll pass it on to my husband. He's a history buff.

Second, the fantastical makes a much greater appearance here than it did in Maguire's other works. Mirror Mirror is the story of Snow White so we're expecting to see dwarves and poison apples and maybe a prince. The dwarves were much more mythological than I was expecting. It was sort of interesting but I think they fell flat in that they had no real personality. They were just something that happened and not a part of the story. They were Maguire's deux ex machina when he'd written himself into a corner.

The search for the Apple from the Tree of Knowledge was an unnecessary subplot. Why go to the trouble of setting up Lucrezia as a poisoner when she was going to poison a mystical Apple? Why set up the Apple as mystical if Lucrezia was just going to poison one?

This one was a disappointment. I'm giving it a 2.