Cinderella retoldIn the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be … Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.
The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love-and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.
Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.more
This book is the best book ever!
My best friend recommended it to me and I absolutely loved it, I still always read it. It is absolutely fenominal!!!!
I took Ash by Malinda Lo with me on a trip to Germany in October. Turned out to be a good choice. The atmosphere, setting, and style of this book all felt very German to me.
It’s a retelling of the Cinderella story except that Ash’s love interests are a male fairy of the dark and tortured variety (you know a real underhill fairy) and a female huntress of pagan rights old world inclination ~ the prince is mere side character.
I enjoyed Ash very much and it suited not only travel through Germany but travel in general, as it was a comfortable read ~ easy to pick up and put down again yet absorbing enough to entertain and distract from uncomfortable things like airplane take off and landing.
To me this book felt like a mix of Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr, Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day-George, and The Black Swan by Mercedes Lackey.
I thought Ash might have benefited from a little humor to break up the overwhelming monotony of Ash’s depression, but I suspect this very depression is what would make this book so appealing to teen girl readers. And, of course, I always want more humor in my books.
Sometimes I did feel distanced from Ash and had a hard time relating to her. I think I identified far more with the huntress, who was (intentionally, I believe) the most vibrant character in the story. I found myself wondering, in the end, why the huntress fell in love with Ash ~ was it Ash’s looks? Her personality seemed a little, well, absent. Yet I didn’t want the huntress to be that shallow.
This can be attributed to the book’s style of fairy tale retelling, which I refer to as distanced or atmospheric writing, practiced by such greats as Patricia McKillip. In the end, I was left with an overwhelming urge to reread The Black Swan and the certain knowledge that while I enjoyed Ash very much, and I adore seeing LGBTQ themes in YA fantasy, Ella Enchanted still holds as the first lady of Cinderella retellings in this jaded old heart.
I love a good fairy tale re-imagining.
I read this book while in the UK, attending and speaking at a conference in Liverpool. This book took me a total of maybe two days to read, and I loved every single second of it.
I remember beginning it and thinking to myself that I wouldn’t like it as much as I thought I would, but then as the pages kept turning and the story kept progressing, I just found myself finding every excuse to read.
The story is a new take on the classic story of Cinderella. Ash, a young girl whose mother was a grassroots witch and whose father is a man who never believed much in that stuff, has been orphaned after the unfortunate death of both her birth parents. Her cruel stepmother demotes her to slave and chambermaid, and locks away anything that belongs to Ash from her parents. In a fit of desperation, Ash starts to spend whole evenings lying near her dead mother’s grave, spurred on by the memory of the folktale in their part of the world that says that if no vigil is kept on the night that somebody is buried, their soul will be taken away. She is constantly hoping to find the Fae that live in the forests, and one day is granted her wish. A Fae man, Sidhaen, arrives and grants her her wishes, but makes a deal with her that eventually, she must go with him to the fairy world, never to return to her own. This all sounds well and good, as she is completely obsessed and in love with the fairy prince, but it is when she falls in love with the King’s Huntress that this decision becomes all the more difficult.
This story is so well told and beautifully written, and though you know Ash will eventually find her happiness, it is still so suspenseful in its own way.
What I especially liked about it is that Ash is never explicitly said to have any attraction towards either gender, effectively making her a bisexual character. It is also not really something that is ever shown to be fully frowned upon in their society for Ash to be falling in love with a woman, although all the women around her seem to be flocking towards men. Perhaps we just never get to see that side of this world; perhaps it’s just a non-issue altogether. It is nice, though, to read a story where a gay character doesn’t dwell on the backlash of their attraction for pages on end.
Seriously though, read this book if you like re-imagined fairytales. Every single part of it was just so well-written and plotted out, and I loved the build up in the story from Ash’s childhood to her adolescence, and her steady falling in love with (and eventual pulling away from) the fairy world in the wake of her mother’s death.
All in all, my final rating is 5/5. Please read this book and appreciate how amazing it is!
We need more LGBT main characters in the fantasy/fiction genre!!! Loved it!!
The easiest way to describe Malinda Lo’s Ash is to say “queer Cinderella for Young Adults”. However, such a simple statement is a disservice to the deeply engaging world Lo creates for her protagonist.
I like to think of Ash as a wonderful departure from tradition, even when its world is firmly rooted in classic fairytales. Yes, there is a ball to attend that the fierceless protagonist must abandon before midnight, there is a prince, and there is, of course, a wicked step-mother. However, the story doesn’t enslave itself to the Cinderella that we already know, and instead creates its own unique path.
To recap quickly: Ash’s mother passes away and her father remarries, bringing into his household a step-mother and two step-sisters for Ash. When Ash’s father dies, she becomes a servant to her own step-family. Sound familiar? Indeed it is up until that point. However, soon Ash starts seeing a strange man that belongs to the fairy race, and who substitutes the fairy godmother character (with a lot less bibbidi bobbidi booing). Ash longs to go with him, unless until she meets the head of the royal hunt.
The world-building of the novel is fantastic, mixing a Celtic style of fairy folklore with a classic Disney-like approach, thus treating the reader to dark fantasy at its best. Fairies appear as a magic race that humans deal with at their own peril, and whose favors always come with a price. The writing style, too, makes the story feel both traditional and new, honoring folktales while playing around with more modern social notions.
The lesbian love story isn’t treated as controversial, which is always a nice surprise, since the conflict comes instead from a very classic coming-of-age narrative, as well as from class difference. The relationship between the two characters isn’t overtly romantic until maybe halfway through the book, and it’s quite innocent as well, but satisfying in its akwardness and friendship that grows into something more.
The best thing about the book is definetely its well thought-out characters. Three-dimensional and engaging, Ash is an easy favorite for a YA protagonist, likeable, coregeous and spirited. Her struggle with the fairy world is well-supported by her grief over the death of her mother, and her choices are understandable.
Kaisa, Ash’s love interest, is a completely original creation to the Cinderella story, and works as a sympathetic and strong presence within the narrative, making it easy to understand why Ash’s final choice is between the magic world of fairies and the human world where she has found love.
Lo has crafted here a beautiful and dark tale, where the protagonist must decide between a dangerous flirtation that offers her a reprieve from her sadness, and finding salvation on her own terms. Ash will conquer fans of LGBT YA books, but I reccommend it for any fan of well-built fantasy worlds, fairytale retellings, romance and great female protagonists.
A retelling of Cinderella in a beautiful, lyrical, we-don’t-need-no-prince way.
I want to rest my weary head on Malinda Lo’s gorgeous sentences. She isn’t just a storyteller, she’s an artist with words in her brush.
Ash is left behind by a mother who believed in old magic and a father who was trying to be practical about things. In the grip of her stepmother, living as a servant to her and the stepsisters, she feels unloved and untethered.
Then the magic she desperately seeks to escape it all reveals itself–with limitations (the reason is lovely). Soon she meets the king’s huntress, who invites her to learn the skills of horse riding and hunting by her side. Her heart finally begins to beat again.
Over time, she discovers who she is, and how she really feels about her family, her magical contact, the huntress, and even the prince.
This isn’t the Cinderella we grew up with, it’s a tale of self-discovery and finding home that is so much more important than pretty princes and glass slippers.
(Fiction, Teen, YA, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Coming of Age, Romance, LGBTQIA+)
Malinda Lo crafted a beautiful and exquisite fairytale with Ash and it is one that I fully recommend to any reader looking for that mystical and magical euphoria that a good fairytale brings. In this story you will find fairies, injustices made right and a magical world that can only be best described as enchanting.
This is such a lovely story. It’s filled with small fairy tales along the way and has a couple plot-twists. Definitely a page turner!
While well written, and a good story, this book just wasn’t what I was expecting. I think it’s probably a great book for some though. It started of slow, was kind of hard for me to get into it. Also, some of the names are difficult to pronounce and I found myself constantly looking up how they were said. The story itself is sweet and definitely a spin off of Cinderella that I hadn’t seen even attempted before. I would have liked to see the same sort of story, only perhaps set in more modern times. All in all, it was a good book, I don’t have anything bad to say about it, it just wasn’t one that I’d call a favorite. If you like fairy tale retellings, especially that involve actual fairies, you’ll probably like this book.