Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir

[lightreads]

Princess Floralida and the Forty-Flight Tower

4/5. An absolutely delightful novella about a princess who gets locked at the top of a tower full of monsters, and what she does when all the princes who try to rescue her get eaten. I specifically recommend the audio, which is read by one of my favorite narrators of all time, Moira Quirk. (I have literally read books just because she narrates them). Anyway, this is a messy but satisfying story of becoming, and the unbearable ordeal of being friends with someone. Not so much a fractured fairy tale as a splattered fairy tale.

Link is to the fancy Sub Press hardcover, but it's also cheap on Kindle.

Content notes: Gore.

Comments

[jadelennox]

ooh, Moira Quirk has a good list of titles, too, I'll seek her out.

Sometimes those narrators-I'll-listen-to-reading the phone book lead to unfortunate side effects. Like Bahni Turpin, who's so great, and often gets matched with grim adult racism fiction.

[lightreads]

googles wooooow, she really does. That is some grim stuff. I assume she's down with it, but oi.

[readerjane]

I saw so many raves about her Gideon series, and bounced off the first one distressingly quickly because zombies grimdark hopeless zombies and did I say zombies?

This one sounds… still intense, but maybe doesn’t take itself quite so seriously? I’ll give it a try.

[lightreads]

Hm. I could say a lot of things about Gideon the Ninth, but taking itself seriously really isn't one of them. Lots of body horror though. Lots and lots. It's kind of her thing -- cheerfully sarcastic body horror.

[fitzcamel]

[belated] Pause to note the briefly-brain-splodey moment when I realized that this is indeed the same Moira Quirk who was the referee for Nickelodeon GUTS. #eldermillennialproblems [/belated]

[lightreads]

Okay, you just legit blew my mind.