A Spindle Splintered follows Zinnia as she pricks her finger and finds herself in another world with a sleeping beauty eager to escape her fate.

Storytelling

I love Alix E. Harrow. There, I said it. Her storytelling is impressive, and A Spindle Splintered highlights how powerful she is with words.

A Spindle Splintered is not the longest read. Running at only 128 pages, Harrow works thoughtfully to build up this feminist narrative of a girl living under a curse of her own, one that will end her life on her 21^st birthday. A day where she will fall asleep and never wake up.

Hence her obsession with the Sleeping Beauty fairytale.

The pacing, the momentum, it never falters as Zinnia tries to find a way to break the spell of Sleeping Beauty. Harrow takes the fairytale apart, subverting the sexism that defined the original texts and modernizing the tale with an empowered protagonist who is eager to escape her dire fate and help those stuck escape their own.

But more than that, in a few pages, Harrow shows readers the many fairytales that can follow Sleeping Beauty. Mike Chen hit the nail when he said, “Like Into the Spider-Verse for Disney princess…”. It was incredible to be given snippets of various versions of this tale, the multiple ways the story can break its mold and become something else entirely while still holding onto its substance.

Final Thoughts

A Spindle Splintered is mind-blowing. Harrow gives readers a short and sweet narrative that subverts all expectations. It moves gracefully, highlighting the sexism in old fairy tales, taking the “moral” and creating something new.