Six-Gun Snow White

by Catherynne M. Valente

25 Words or Less: This one is easy – Snow White re-imagined as a supernatural coming-of-age tale in the American Wild West.

Cover Art:

Lovely. Screams the work of Charles Vess, and guess what? It is.

Formatting, Grammar & Spelling:

Professional, no errors noted, American English.

Prose:

Richly poetic, playing with modern notions of the cadence of the old west – obviously great writing right off the bat.

Characterisation & Dialogue:

What starts out as an omniscient narrator is soon revealed to be the titular heroine, whose characterful voice tells out the story of how her white father and Native American mother came to be together, and how she was born – “snow white” being his fervent prayer for the colour of her skin in light of a clash of cultures that would likely shun a mixed-race child from both sides. Fantastic stuff, basically.

Narrative:

Was I enticed by the story so far? Yes. The superb high-concept of the story more or less made this a win in my mind even before I opened the sample. Nothing I read served to change my mind.

Observations:

If last week’s sample, The Six-Gun Tarot, struck me as a journeyman YA weird western, this week’s absolutely sings as a piece of quality writing for any age-group of reader, but which young adults should have fan-fired at them from the hip.

Conclusion:

Only a novella, true, but this promises to be a piece of truly great fiction from a writer with a track record for skilful storytelling. I’ve not previously read anything by Valente, but she’s on my radar now – and at under three dollars this was an immediate buy.

Rating:

BOUGHT!

---

 = Technicalities =

Title: Six-Gun Snow White

Author: Catherynne M. Valente

Publisher: Corsair

Price: $2.90 (August 2014)