![]() ![]() Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia’s last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. ![]() Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. It’s Zinnia Gray’s twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it’s the last birthday she’ll ever have. Cover art and design by David Curtis, based on Arthur Rackham’s original illustrations of The Sleeping Beauty Here the “Sleeping Beauty” story is front and center as the Fable she examines and honors. Harrow turns her focus to a shorter, though no less potent tale, with A Spindle Splintered, which launches a new series she calls Fractured Fables. Alix Harrow is a writer whose work has shown the power of story, I’ve read both of her novels ( The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches) and that love of story and respect for story are what shines through as a common thread between those two novels. ![]()
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![]() ![]() It’s so enclosed and cut off from the world that it seems like secrets are going on there, and you just want to know what’s happening.” ![]() “I was expecting more midnight feasts and pranks, and it was a little more like real life.” Why does she think boarding school settings have always appealed to readers? “There’s something fantastic about a boarding school setting. “ was great, I really enjoyed it, but it wasn’t exactly like Enid Blyton,” she laughs. Thanks to her father, who passed on his childhood favourites, 31-year-old Stevens grew up reading Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers and St Clare’s school stories before heading off to boarding school herself. ![]() The stories are essentially a mixture of two beloved genres: the golden age murder mystery and the classic boarding school story. Over the course of seven books Daisy and Hazel have solved murders in their school, a country house, a Cambridge college, a theatre, Hazel’s native Hong Kong and even on the Orient Express. Set in the 1930s, the books follow the adventures of youthful detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, who are both pupils at Deepdean School for Girls. And it hooked me for life.” Now it’s Stevens herself who is introducing younger readers to the joys of an unpredictable whodunnit, as the author of the wildly popular and hugely entertaining Murder Most Unladylike series. “I really wasn’t expecting the twist that’s in that book. ![]() It was Agatha Christie’s groundbreaking 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. When Robin Stevens was twelve years old she read a book that would ultimately change her life. ![]() ![]() As a standalone book, The Silver Chair wasn’t literary legend. Additionally, the prior books had much deeper character issues (thinking of the interplay between Lucy and Edmund). ![]() However, this book didn’t make me laugh even though an evil Witch did make an appearance. In prior books, the White Witch was my favorite character because she was so funny. The Silver Chair is one of the weaker volumes in The Chronicles of Narnia. One good deed turned into literary legend. ![]() What will Jill and Eustace discover on their adventure?ĭid you know that CS Lewis took in children after the war? They were fascinated by his wardrobe which inspired him to write The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. However, Aslan needs their help to find Prince Rillian. Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb are running from some school bullies when they find themselves in another world. ![]() |