Her style combines the vivid images and straightforward storytelling of classic fairy tales with deeper psychological elements that give these tales a human as well as a magical edge. What makes these stories particularly delightful to read is Lee's modern spin on fairy-tale prose. And eight of the nine are straightforward fantasy, while one has a science fiction edge. All but one of the nine has a female protagonist. Two invert the classic moral schemes by featuring evil versions of famed heroines. However, I will say that they range from a retelling so faithful that the only new narrative element is a final melancholy twist, to one so different that I can't tell which of several similar originals it might be based on. I don't want to match each of these nine stories to its source, as identifying the original is part of the pleasure of the reading experience. One of the early writers to do so was the versatile Tanith Lee, whose 1983 volume Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer is an elegant, unsettling collection of nine classic tales re-imagined in ambiguous, adult fashion. Names both in and out of the genre "ghetto," from Angela Carter to Margo Lanagan to Angela Slatter, have demonstrated particular mastery of the form. Famed anthologists Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling edited a six-volume series for adults in the 1990s, and in more recent years have put together several volumes marketed as young adult fiction but smart, dark, and complex enough to appeal to older readers as well.
Retold and original fairy tales, which allow us to recapture some of that sense of wonder, have therefore become a major subgenre of contemporary fantasy and horror. Many of us, I'm sure, enjoyed fairy tales as children, but time has made them so familiar that even the darker original versions can lose their magic.
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