Multiverse hopping, story-fixing Zinnia Gray returns in Alix Harrow’s second Fractured Fables story, A Mirror Mended. After “repairing” some stories (much in the same way Dr. Sam Beckett repaired timelines in Quantum Leap), Zinnia finds herself in a version of “Snow White,” much to her surprise since she’s been largely “fixing” or “mending” different versions of “Sleeping Beauty.”
A Mirror Mended is the next installment in USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow’s Fractured Fables series.
Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.
Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can’t handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White’s Evil Queen has found out how her story ends and she’s desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone.
Will Zinnia accept the Queen’s poisonous request, and save them both from the hot iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?
What makes matters more frustrating is that Zinnia seems to be stuck in this version of “Snow White,” with the beautiful evil stepmother holding her hostage. She knows Zinnia mends stories that go wrong and wants Zinnia to help her to get her own happy ending. While a woman who killed her husband and plots to kill her stepdaughter might be the least empathetic characters in the history of fiction, this is where Harrow’s powerful storytelling really shines again – she really has a powerful knack for upending long-held traditions. For starters, the Evil Queen has no name. The Evil Queen is fully aware that she is a character in a story and has an inkling of her fate and she wants that happy ending afforded so many fairy tale characters. Harrow manages to build up empathy for the character in a great way, especially considering A Mirror Mended is such a short novel/novella.
Zinnia once again shines as the protagonist, her snark and genre-savvy are delightful. Of course, that genre-savvy comes in handy for her “job” and the fact that she’s an expert on stories and folklore. The pop-culture references abound, especially in the dialogue between Zinnia and the unnamed Evil Queen, which provides some enjoyable humor. As such, the chemistry between Zinnia and the Evil Queen is a strong backbone to the story. You could say their relationship initially is that of frenemies, but Harrow’s navigation of the two character’s converging plotlines brings them together in a believable fashion. Again, a delightful relationship to see blossom. I realize now that I’ve used the word “delightful” twice in this paragraph already, but that word perfectly sums up this story.
Powerful prose, modern sensibilities, and a great sense of fun make A Mirror Mended a great follow-up to A Spindle Splintered. There are many other fables/fairy tales Harrow can explore with her fine-tuned pen and sensibilities, I for one would welcome more stories in this vein with these characters.
© 2022 Rob H. Bedford
Published by Tor.com Publishing | June 2022
https://alixeharrow.wixsite.com/author
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
