When I was in high school, there was a perfect storm sort of scenario. I don't remember the details, but a group of us ended up in "the Pit," which was a recessed stage area behind the library where we sometimes had assemblies. The details are murky. All I know for sure is that we weren't there for any particular reason. We were just killing time because for some reason we couldn't go to class. We also had access to a TV and a VCR (oh, yes, VHS! I'm... at least ten years old), and a classmate named Jeff was there. We were bored, and Jeff suggested we watch a movie that he happened to have in his book bag. The movie was called The Princess Bride.

The reactions were divided: those who had seen it and were super excited and those like me, who hadn't, and mocked the guys who wanted to watch a movie with "Princess" in the title. Needless to say, the Hadn't Seen It folks soon became Fred Savage. "Is this a kissing book?" and "Not worried. More like... concerned" and "You could read a little more. I... if you wanted."

So with that in mind, let me wholeheartedly recommend you read this book. It's called The Stepsister Scheme, and it's the first novel in The Princess Series. Yeah, that's right, The Princess Series.

The main characters are Cinderella (Danielle), Snow White (Snow) and Sleeping Beauty (Talia). The cover of the first book is misleading. It looks sort of like something a high school girl would tote around in her book bag (not to badmouth high school girls, but they ARE partially to blame for the Twilight nonsense). But like The Princess Bride, which was disguised as a kissing book, this book is so much more than the cover.

First and foremost, the fairy tales lie. It's like the telephone game, where every person who hears the story embellishes it. Cinderella, taken to the ball by mice pulling a pumpkin carriage? Hardly. The story begins at the end, after the Happily Ever After, when Danielle (Cinderella) is adjusting to being a princess. She's alone in her chambers when one of her stepsisters, Charlotte, appears and tries to kill her. Danielle is saved by the quick intervention of Talia, disguised as a palace maid, who is actually a trained assassin. After the attempt is thwarted, Talia is introduced to another princess: Snow White (known as Snow), who is a sorceress that uses mirrors for her magic.

The book is filled with magic. The characters are more likely to lash out with an incantation than a bow and arrow. Snow uses spells and magic mirrors for her attacks, while Talia was blessed by fairy magic to be an ass-kicking fighter. Danielle doesn't have any special magic, but she does possess a sword left to her by the tree that was her mother (don't worry about it; it makes sense in the story). The story doesn't use magic as a get-out-of-trouble-free card. There are rules and restrictions to magic, and spells don't always work quite the way they're supposed to. The scene where the three heroines mount winged horses could have devolved into a teenage girl fantasy of unicorns and Pegasi, but there was enough about the reality of trying to ride a winged horse (where exactly would the saddle go?) that it doesn't succumb to the overly cute.

That's another thing you should know about this book. It is dark. Seriously dark. There's blood, violence, darkness... you might expect an aforementioned Pegasus or three in a book like this, but you don't expect one of them to be viciously attacked until its wings bleed. The stories imply that after Cinderella ends, the stepsisters and their evil stepmother just vanish. This book reveals that their brand of hate/envy doesn't just fade away when the story is done (and some of the stuff that happens in this book seem like maybe the Grimm versions of the fairy tales were a bit bowdlerized themselves).

It does have lighter moments, and moments when you think that maybe things are going to be nice and sweet again. But they don't last very long. Even the ending of the novel leaves some threads hanging for a possible backlash. There's no shying away from violence in the fight scenes, and there's no sex, but there's certainly a lot implied. And one of the most awesome things about it? The princesses have to save a prince. No damsels in distress in... well. There are damsels in distress. But by and large they rescue themselves.

Now we're venturing into spoiler territory. It shouldn't affect your enjoyment of the book as it's mainly backstory, but a warning is necessary.

You want dark? How about the idea that Sleeping Beauty wasn't woken by true love's kiss? Her prince tried that, of course, but when it didn't work, he decided to just... keep going. That's right, she was woken from her spell by childbirth. Yeah. They went there. So Talia doesn't sleep anymore. She's had enough sleep for a lifetime, thanks very much. Plus there's the fact that Snow White is kind of a slut. And by kind of I mean really truly.

But the thing that got me to cave in and give this book a try? Talia is in love with Snow. If you know going in, the foreshadowing is obvious. It emerges from subtext toward the end of the book, when Talia is in Snow's cleavage (seriously) and breaks a spell on Snow using true love's kiss. Snow is unaware of Talia's feelings, but Danielle saw and has been sworn to secrecy. That alone was enough to make me pick up the books.

This book isn't the fairy tale story your mother told you after tucking you into bed. You know the saying: a story with a happy ending is just a story that isn't done yet. This book picks up where Happily Ever After left off and shows that sometimes even magic isn't enough to solve everyone's problems.

I highly recommend this book. I'm fairly sure I'll be recommending the other books in the series as well (I had 150 pages left in the book before I ran out and bought the others. I couldn't even wait for USPS, I had to buy them at an actual store so they'd be on hand). Check them out. If the synopsis sounded interesting to you at all, you're definitely in for a treat.

A side note: If this becomes a movie and they don't cast The Good Wife's Archie Panjabi as Talia, there should be an uprising in the streets. People should still see it, but we should grumble while we wait in line.

   -- Geonn Cannon