From that day forward she never used my name. Eventually I forgot it. Mrs. H called me something new. She named me cruel and smirking, she named me not for beauty or for cleverness or for sweetness. She named me a thing I could aspire to but never become, the one thing I was not and could never be: Snow White.

Well that was most certainly a book.

Take (the vague outline) the story of Snow White. Make it a Western. Things get weird.

This time around, Mr. H (never expanded) buys Snow White’s mother from her tribe. She dies giving birth. Mr. H remarries (giving us the evil stepmother/Queen, of course). Things go well (They do not). Snow White goes on the run (with a fancy gun–Rose Red), gets in trouble, finds her way out of it, and gets some really trip poisoning/death scenes.

It’s a delightful idea, writ in a rather odd style.

I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed the book. Full of weird phrasing and hard to follow (even knowing it’s a Snow White story–or perhaps because of it).

But I still think it’s probably worth a read.

Deer Boy drags the knife over his chest. He is giving her his heart. He is exchanging a deer’s heart for a girl’s heart. If hers would fix him, his will fix her. He knows it. She isn’t his sister. She is his sister.

You have been warned.