★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: Six-Gun Snow White
• Author: Catherynne N. Valente
• Year: 2013 (mine was 2016 library hardcover)
• Pages: 153
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publisher: Saga Press
• ISBN 978-1-4814-4472-9 (hardcover)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia page

 

Summary

Winner of the 2014 Locus Award for Best Novella (and nominated for the same year’s Nebula and Hugo, same category), Six-Gun Snow White is a brisk fantasy novella, retelling the well-known fairy tale Snow White but as a gritty western.

 

Commentary

Though I thoroughly enjoyed Valente’s literary meth lab that was Space Opera, I was glad to open this novella and see that her style had changed. Completely. Like a chameleon, if chameleons were writers I mean, Valente took on an entirely different voice here. If you disliked Space Opera due to the writing style, that shouldn’t affect your take on this book.

Here, she writes in an affected Old West verbiage, which may or may not be accurate to any time or place in the real world but certainly gives the Old West vibe. There’s hollerin and fussin and shootouts and horses and silver mines and Indian Territory. Also, Snow White isn’t a princess but the daughter of a businessman and a Crow woman. There IS a step-mother and a magic mirror and some apples, but I didn’t recognize much else from my distant memory of the Disney cartoon movie (my primary Snow White background source material).

If you’re looking for something totally different, this is probably it.

 

Points Off For...

I took off a point for the abrupt and nonsensical ending (which I won’t spoil) that I admittedly didn’t understand. Also, there’s a hard switch between first person and third-person, announced on page 65 with: “This is where Snow White gets off. Where she stops telling a story about other folk and starts being in a story other folk tell.” Okay.

Also, I’m pretty sure the Old West lingo slipped into 1930s Chicago gangster talk at some point, but I’m no expert on either, so... Either way, I tired of the lingo quickly, especially where it made it difficult to understand what was going on. Was it a bear that approached Snow White (on pages 131, 135, and 138), or was it her mother? Or step-mother in disguise? I just don’t know.

One more thing, and I don’t know if I lowered the score for this or not, but the chapter titles are nonsensical and (apparently) unrelated to the contents of each chapter. A couple of examples: “Snow White Drinks The Ocean” and “Snow White Juggles Her Own Eyes”.

 

Conclusion

This was worth my time, if only because it was different, but also because it was quick to read (a couple of hours?) which makes a huge difference in whether I feel like my time was wasted. And one can’t help but be impressed by Valente’s ability to switch styles so thoroughly and convincingly. If one person only read this book, and another person only read Space Opera, they could never have a coherent conversation about Valente. So now I’m even more curious about her other writings.

(Note: This also makes seven consecutive books/stories I’ve read/reviewed written by women, which is almost certainly a lifetime record for me. Back in July/August, I had five in a row and earlier in the year I did six. Not that I’m trying for a record, mind you; I just noticed this. One thing I am trying to do is make up for so many years of reading ONLY books written by men.)

 

 

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