Review - Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran

Title

Snow, Glass, Apples

Author

Neil Gaiman

Illustrator

Colleen Doran

Content Warning

Not safe for children: graphic depictions of sex, nudity, gore, implied incest, sex with a minor, necrophilia

Goodreads Synopsis

A chilling fantasy retelling of the Snow White fairy tale by bestselling creators Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran.

A not-so-evil queen is terrified of her monstrous stepdaughter and determined to repel this creature and save her kingdom from a world where happy endings aren't so happily ever after.

From the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Locus, World Fantasy, Nebula Award-winning and Sunday Times-bestselling writer Neil Gaiman (American Gods) comes this graphic novel adaptation by Colleen Doran (Troll Bridge). (Goodreads)

Story Review

***** (5 stars out of 5)

This is an extremely dark (not safe for children) retelling of Snow White, where the stepmother is cast as the storyteller and Snow White as a vampire who uses seduction as a means to drink blood. I really enjoyed how plausible this retelling is in terms of how the story might have been sold to the public to make the stepmother out to be the evil one. The illustrations in this book are beyond stunning and there is a good balance between text and images to tell the story. 

*Spoiler Warning*

Do not read beyond this point if you have not read the graphic novel and you care about spoilers.

Retelling

This story is a retelling because it imagines the stepmother as the "hero" with Snow White as the "villain." It also portrays Snow White as a vampire who uses seduction to lure in her prey.

Story Motifs

• Queen wishes for a child - Not present
• Three drops of blood - Not present, but there is plenty of blood to be found in the images when the girl sucks on the stepmother's hand
• White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony - the old queen is described as having hair the color of dark wood (ebony) and that her daughter was far paler than her mother, the girl is drawn and described as having eyes as black as coal and as black as her hair, lips that were redder than blood, the last image says "her hair as black as coal - her lips redder than blood - her skin, snow-white"
• Snow White - there's a reference that a gentle wind could scatter her like snow, there is also a lot of references to snow and imagery of snow, it describes her skin as "snow-white"
• Mother dies - mother dies in childbirth
• King - father is a king
• Stepmother/Evil Queen - people called her a witch, she dreamed of the king before he ever found her, she cast a glamour on herself to make the king stop, after the king dies she becomes queen
• Magic Mirror - she saw the king in reflections all her life (implies a mirror like surface), she used a mirror to scry at the Spring Fair when she was younger, she uses it again to scry for the girl
• Jealousy - in this case the stepmother feels fear because the girl drinks her blood, enthralls her, and kills the king, the stepmother locks her own chamber at dusk and has bars put on the windows
• Huntsman to kill Snow White - the huntsmen took her during the day when she was weakest and took her out to the forest to kill her
• Heart and liver as proof of death - asks them to bring back the heart, the heart continued to pulse and beat, she hung it in her chamber with rowan berries and garlic
• Huntsman lets Snow White live - Not present, they kill her and take the heart and then bury her remains
• Huntsman kills boar for proof - she says that some people think she was fooled and that it was the heart of a stag or boar
• Cottage of the seven dwarves - there is a reference to dwarves living in the forest, a huddle of hairy men come out of the forest during the fifth year of the stepmother's reign, Snow White lives in a cave where dwarves also live
• Snow White convinces them to let her stay - Not present, although at best guess she compels them to let her stay with them
• Laces - the queen takes ribbons and pretty hair ornaments along with the apples
• Poisoned comb - Not present, but there is a reference to pretty hair ornaments in her basket
• Poisoned apple - the princess eats a dried apple that her stepmother gives her, lets of apple imagery to be found, the queen poisons three green apples with her own blood and an herb concoction that makes them turn bright red, the queen disguises herself as an old peddler woman, the heart stops beating
• Glass coffin - the dwarves from the cave come into town for the Spring Fair and buy up everyone's crystals and sheets of glass, they use it to make a glass and crystal cairn
• Prince - when the queen is 25 a prince arrives, he is apparently into necrophilia and wants the queen to just lie there like a corpse, on his way home he sees the princess in her cairn and offers the dwarves money for her corpse
• Snow White revives - conjecture if the prince knocked the piece of apple out of the princess's throat or if she bit him and washed it down with his blood, her heart starts to pulse and beat again
• Wedding - the princess and the prince tell the queen they will marry
• Evil Queen is punished/killed - kept in a stone cell until the wedding, paraded through the streets, tossed in a kiln
• Glowing hot shoes - the queen is put inside a kiln and burned alive

Retelling Review

***** (5 stars out of 5)

Although it is extremely dark, it is a really good retelling of Snow White in that almost all the story motifs are there but twisted to make the stepmother into the hero of the story with the princess as an evil vampire. It basically turns the original fairy tale into the "propaganda" version that the prince and Snow White told people so they wouldn't care about the stepmother being killed. It also gives us an origin story for the stepmother and her magic scrying mirror.