"Uprooted" and "Spinning Silver" by Naomi Novik (2015, 2018)

 **While 'updated fairy tales' are having a fantastic Renaissance right now, there are few who do it better than Naomi Novik**

The real story isn’t half as pretty as the one you’ve heard. The real story is, the miller’s daughter with her long golden hair wants to catch a lord, a prince, a rich man’s son, so she goes to the moneylender and borrows for a ring and a necklace and decks herself out for the festival. And she’s beautiful enough, so the lord, the prince, the rich man’s son notices her, and dances with her, and tumbles her in a quiet hayloft when the dancing is over, and afterwards he goes home and marries the rich woman his family has picked out for him. Then the miller’s despoiled daughter tells everyone that the moneylender’s in league with the devil, and the village runs him out or maybe even stones him, so at least she gets to keep the jewels for a dowry, and the blacksmith marries her before that firstborn child comes along a little early. 

Because that’s what the story’s really about: getting out of paying your debts. That’s not how they tell it, but I knew. My father was a moneylender, you see.

From the opening lines of "Spinning Silver", Naomi Novik makes it very clear what she's setting out to do:  Retell fairy tales, tell the other side of them.  While some authors choose to this in a largely satirical way, Novik plays it straight  And in the process, tells some very, very poignant stories

"Spinning Silver" starts at Rumpelstiltskin, although goes much further than that.  The main character, Miryem, is a moneylender and businesswoman who boasts that she is so good at her job that she can turn silver into gold.  These boasts reach the wrong ears, specifically those of a fairy king, who kidnaps her and whisks her away to his kingdom . . . where she finds that in that realm she does in fact have this power.  Adventure ensues

"Uprooted" starts at Rapunzel, a young girl is taken from her village and forced to live in a tower with "The Dragon", a powerful wizard.  She learns of his magic and learns why he requires a mortal servant and, you know, all of that.  Adventure ensues

Novik deeply understands these fairy tales, understands the meaning and importance of the stories that shape all of us.  Of course, they don't always hold up to scrutiny, a point she lampshades in an aside in "Uprooted":

I still couldn’t follow the story, or remember one sentence to the next, but I began to have the feeling that I wasn’t meant to. If I could have remembered, at least some of the words would have been wrong: like hearing again a half-remembered favorite tale from childhood and finding it unsatisfying, or at least not as I’d remembered it. And that was how the Summoning made itself perfect, by living in that golden place of vague and loving memory.

Definitely a bit of snark there

And specifically Novik is pointing out with these books that female characters generally aren't portrayed that well in these fairy tales.  Be it Snow White and Sleeping Beauty waiting for a prince to come along, or Belle being asked to fix a man by loving him enough

(I'm sorry, but honestly, I have to drop in an aside here.  That story is seriously fucked up, and honestly Disney legit has blood on their hands for telling generations of young people, especially young women, that the way to deal with a partner who has violent outbursts is to fix him by loving him enough.  That's so fucked up.  Seriously.  That is not ok)

So how does she decide to retell these stories?  Well, by focusing on the characters, their backgrounds and their dreams, their pasts and their hopes for the future.  Given the simplest of frameworks "a woman can turn silver to gold", "a woman is taken to live in a tower", she take time to give these women depth and purpose and above all else agency.  Both of these characters are beholden in some way to the powerful men to which they are attached, but that doesn't mean they simply accept that

More than updated fairy tales, these books are the stories of women who stand up against the story that is trying to tell them to give up and accept being controlled by a powerful man.  Even if it's just surviving and keeping your spirit and your pride, that's a good start:

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.

More than that, however, Novik is simply telling stories that are, well, fun to read

I loved these books because of the way they took these tales and changed them and updated them and tried to make them a bit more "realistic" but--and this is key--without losing the sense of magic.  It's a delicate balance, and Novik walks it perfectly

In particular, "Spinning Silver" has an incredible sense of joy and most importantly of magic.  The magic isn't like "hard" fantasy, with clearly defined rules.  It's more like fairy tale magic, and it's beauty.  Because in this world, magic is generated by declaration, by saying you can do something (like spin silver to gold) and actually do it.  The bolder the claim, the greater the magic you generate if you succeed.  As a metaphor, it's brilliant:

He would only shrug and look at me expectantly again, waiting for high magic: magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.

In these books, Novik is reaching into the fairy tales that we've heard thousands of times, and she's challenging the character to grow and change and become better versions of themselves.  Make a larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then step inside and somehow grow to fill it

I loved these books

“My mother had enough magic to give me three blessings before she died,” I said, and he instinctively bent in to hear it. “The first was wit; the second beauty, and the third—that fools should recognize neither.”