Got my first book blogger's review today

http://lyricalreviewsya.blogspot.com/2011/09/review-snow-white-and-alien-artemis.html

I have to admit the title of this book made it pretty hard for me to resist, it’s one that really makes you wonder what the hell is going on in the book and it is far too tempting not to find out what it’s really all about. I have to say, I’m pretty glad that I did.

I guess the first thing I imagined was a mad re-telling, bordering on a farce, of the fairytale of Snow White and although it starts out this way, it soon becomes something a lot more epic in its own right. Snow White and the Alien is definitely a story that veers more towards the original fairytale, paying tribute more to the Grimm brothers rather than Disney, with often very dark and gruesome moments. It can be pretty graphic at times with themes such as sexual assault and cannibalism but this actually lends itself to the more macabre origins of fairytales, the versions you wouldn’t tell your children at bedtime. There are also cameos from other fairytale characters such as the grown up Hansel and his cannibal sister, Gretel. At first I was a bit confused as to why Gretel was a cannibal but a big part in the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel is that the witch enslaves them in preparation for eating them and in the original French version the twins slash the throat of their captor. It’s all pretty gruesome when you wash away that Disney layer!

What does remain, however, from both the old and the updated fairytales, is the sense of heroism and the journey the characters go through. Both the heroes, Snow White and Aein (the alien) begin the story as fairly helpless entities, constantly being trodden down by other characters but as the story builds, their potential for heroism becomes fulfilled. They go from being scared and superficial to taking control of their situations, learning to be courageous and seeing through the physical beauty of each other to find the person they love within, no matter what their form. I just love the way this story builds, becoming more and more epic. It moves gracefully from a fantasy to a sci-fi novel, ending a very different story to the one that began the book.

There’s a real sense of the universe getting bigger and bigger, from a fairytale castle in Bavaria to an all out alien invasion. Just writing that sentence makes me think “this cannot possibly work as a story” but actually it does and it does make sense when you turn the last page even though you try to convince yourself that it can’t. Fantasy, at least the once-upon-a-time variety, and science fiction are just poles apart but Artemis Hunt has taken two opposing stories, skilfully melded them together and created a story that actually makes sense in a non-farcical way. I have to hand it to her, that’s quite an achievement and I’d like to see Disney try to make an adaptation of that!

4 stars