Cinderella Is Dead

cw: discussions of domestic abuse, misogyny and homophobia

now, let me out myself as a basic b*tch before we get into this review: i absolutely adore the cinderella story, used to be obsessed with it as a kid and grew up with my own lovely illustrated german copy of the grimm fairy tales. and to this day cinderella retellings can get my attention quite easily if they bring something new to the table.

“cinderella is dead” is not a typical retelling in its structure. it is much more about the question of “what if that story was real and what if an entire country decided to live by that fairy tale's lessons”.

as you can probably tell by my 1 star rating... the book didn't really hit any marks for me. i will try to put some structure into the aspects that turned this book into the disappointment that it ended up being for me, so hold on and fasten your seatbelts


the writing

the writing itself often felt a bit too modern for the setting of the world. i am not quite certain when this is supposed to take place - and bear in mind that this is a made up world - but there are some hints in the world building that it would probably be around the 18th century in our real world? it doesn't really matter what the answer to that is, but it sure isn't 20th/21st century. i know that this is a ya novel but i think that teens are smart enough to understand non-colloquial english, too. i am being a little bit nitpicky on that aspect so let's move on.

aside from the modern style i also feel like the pacing was quite off. sometimes scenes went on for too long and sometimes scenes that should have been really important were over in a flash. what adds to this is that most of the time the atmosphere of the scene wasn't brought across properly. i could somewhat tell what the vibe was but i just wanted more of that. the same goes for how emotions were written in this book. most of the time emotions that the characters, especially our protagonist, were feeling, weren't given enough time to breathe. this is where more words would have been great. writing something along the line of “she felt fear” made the scenes fall flat to me because in my mind i just went “yup she sure did”.


the language

let me start by saying that i almost lost it when it was revealed that the kingdom is called “mersailles”. i was like huh did the author mean to write marseille (big city in france)? or maybe versailles (that's where the french king had his castle)? but no, here we have it, the kingdom of fantasy france is called mersailles. i do not like the name. it's subjective of course, but man this immediately took me out of the story and its fantasy world because i felt like the delivery man just brought me the wish version of france.
the problem isn't just the name of the kingdom, it is the language itself. the fairy tale cinderella is also known as cendrillon, which is basically the french version of the fairy tale, and afaik it is the more well known version thanks to disney & co. so it makes sense that our fantasy world is maybe at least inspired by france. and the name “mersailles” sure sounds like that too. well, why do some characters have french names and why do others have english names? honestly, this confused me a lot. the setting became a linguistic hodgepodge. obviously it is still a fantasy world but i can't help comparing it to our real life countries and languages because that is what the setting is using too. but why is there a character called luke when the author could have just gone for the french version luc?why is one brother called édouard and the other morris instead of the french version maurice? little details like linguistics are something that can make a fictional world feel much more real very easily, especially if you use languages that the readers can recognize, because they associate something specific with it already. and listen, if you want to use english sounding names in your french sounding fantasy kingdom? then use that as an interesting excuse for some background world building, language tells a story. i don't expect every author to be on tolkien levels of linguistics, but at least putting some thought into it can have such a big payoff in the end.


the world building

this is the first big aspect that made this book not work for me at all. the world building here is. not great. and it doesn't make sense.

so, this kingdom basically uses the cinderella fairy tale as its own version of the bible. everyone has to have a pristine copy of the story in their house and the girls have to read it aloud every evening. they have to learn the story by heart like some weird bible verses or whatever. girls have to try to live after cinderella's example and then they might get their own fairy godmother who grants them a wish to help them find a suitor at the ball!! okay obviously this isn't supposed to be something good, it is something that our protagonist is working against actively because it's fucked up propaganda and a tool used by the king to control the people but let's just look at this part separately for a second. why are people doing this? just because the king told them to? cinderella apparently lived 200 years ago - WHICH ISN'T A LONG TIME TBH - and suddenly everyone worships her and her story? that sure is wild. and extremely unrealistic. even if the old king told them to do that 200 years ago... that is such a specific thing to worship, especially when it's just a random woman who managed to get married to the king two. hundred. years. ago. it's as if the king of france suddenly told his people to worship the betrothal story of him and his queen. and 200 years later people were still doing that. in reality, people might be like “okay sure i guess?” and maybe some might believe in the fairy godmother part but also why would they - it is not like magic is deeply established in this world. it doesn't help that the king seems to be enforcing this rule in a very tyrannical way here. i think this part of the world building really discredits the people of fantasy france and makes them all seem a bit.. let's say gullible.

everything about this fantasy france kingdom mersailles just feels like it can be broken down to “evil king oppresses his people, especially girls and women, no one is having a good time”. i really, really wish there were more to it. i had so many questions while reading it. why can't the girls just run away to another kingdom? what are the borders here? how big is this kingdom even? how big is the capital? how does anything work in this kingdom? i don't even know anymore, all i know is “evil king makes people do things”.

i think the cinderella idea itself with the balls and whatnot has a lot of potential. but translating it directly into the world building like this just seems sort of ridiculous and unbelievable. i just feel like this could have been done in a more intriguing and clever way.


the misogyny

i can't NOT talk about this. i understand what the author was trying to do here. mersailles and its laws are misogynistic. women are constantly oppressed and treated badly. one might be able to draw some parallels to how the world is for women in our modern times but also back when being a woman meant not having many rights that men had. so, in theory, this isn't too unrealistic.

but then i dive deeper into the text and think about it for one more second.

the way that this story and world were written reminds me of a very superficial idea of what feminism is about. the stereotypical way that feminist are often portrayed by less well meaning form of media aka “all men are bad and should die”. this book, in its core, unfortunately carries that message. with very few exceptions every single man in this story is a piece of shit. they are either mean, creepy or just flat out abusive. and please do not accuse me of trying to go “not all men” right now, but what i am missing is some realism. all of this is very over the top in the book. as soon as a man popped up i just knew he was either going to say something extremely inappropriately sexual that objectifies women or he was going to be very horrible to his wife. yes, all of that unfortunately happens in real life too. but this is not what makes misogyny the problem that it still is today. i am missing the subtle forms of oppression, mindsets that have developed over centuries that women are for some reason “inferior” to men. being disgusting, creepy and abusive is not where misogyny starts or ends. it felt like a bad caricature.

simply put: i am missing so many nuances on this very difficult and important topic. instead the whole story feels like someone dipped their toes into feminist theories and now thinks that the big takeaway of that is “okay, men are bad, i have learned enough”.

let's talk about the female characters. the two main characters give me girl boss vibes, and you know what, good for them. but what i want to focus on is almost every other female character that we come across. most of them are extremely passive, they just accept that life sucks apparently and that men treat them like shit. oh you beat me half to death every day? guess that's just how it is! guess i should have lived more like cinderella! why. just why. this book wants to show us some kind of feminist stance but then it writes the female characters like this? only our special snowflake protagonist and her love interest are allowed to be smart and strong enough to not believe the propaganda or to not just give up and accept life as it is. yes there are a few minor characters like that too later on but they do not really matter. what matters it the overall impression that one gets from the story: women just let this shit happen to them and think that someone who tries to defy that is simply taking unnecessary risks and should just follow society's rules. amazing. outstanding. i will not travel back in time and show this to the women who always protested against any kind of injustice that they experienced. i don't get it. this also ties into the world building aspect but, like, why would they just accept it as normal that their husbands might treat them like shit and beat them up daily without anyone interfering? and why does every other man just accept this too? wish there were more moments of women rebelling. because that is how it has always been in real life.

once again, i was missing some nuances.

the resolution doesn't make any sense. the way that this story was written made it seem like one singular person aka the king was responsible for introducing the oppression of women into this world. we don't really know how it was before that but from some tidbits i guessed that women were at least allowed to work in the same positions as men, maybe they were even equal in everything, who knows. and then prince charming comes along and is slowly making the laws more restrictive for women under the guise of trying to protect the people. this is NOT how misogyny works. or oppression in general. it is not just cause by one random dude and everyone else just nods and goes along with his new ideas. societies don't work like that. especially considering how fucking awful it gets for the women in this kingdom. this is pretty much pushing the blame onto one person even though it is never just one person. i wish it were that easy.speaking of easy, i wish we could abolish sexism as easily as this book did it. obviously i am exaggerating right now but when we break it down it's like this: evil sexist king is killed, new reigning person is a girl, yay she abolishes every law that oppresses women, problem solved! and the book does mention that it of course isn't as easy as that and that many people will still think like this but it doesn't change the fact that it seems like the problem was suddenly solved very easily.

all in all, i feel like the topic of the oppression of women was treated on one hand in a very exaggerated way and on the other hand in a very superficial way. you don't really gain anything from it, especially since the blame was, in the end, pushed onto one man instead of society itself


the antagonist

it seems fitting that i continue with this aspect now. the antagonist. oh man, this book gave me “cartoonishly evil villain” as the final boss with a sprinkle of sexism on top of that. let's just say that i did not like it.

everything that we learn about the king and then later on the witch/his mother doesn't make him a compelling villain at all. and that's what he is. a typical evil dude who just wants to be evil and have power. this man lacks motivation. yes he wants power and wants to live forever but who is this man?? we barely learn anything about him except that he is EVIL and DISGUSTING and SEXIST. also greedy for power. but why? no one is just born like that. tell us more about him!! in theory i liked the idea of this eternal king who keeps coming back under new disguises and i loved the necromancy angle but i wish the author would have done so much more with that. and then the big reveal that the fairy godmother aka the witch is his mother. i went through the five stages of grief in like 0.1 seconds. once again, in theory i like that idea. i LOVE the idea that she was the one who brought him back and who is now tied to him. but that reveal happened way too late and in such a weird and comical way. it didn't help that the witch dies immediately afterwards. I HAD SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ALL OF THAT. what was that woman even doing? why did she have to bring her son back from the dead? and what was her big plan in the end?i was hoping to learn about their motivations but i guess i didn't get my wish after all, worst fairy godmother, 1/10 would never book her again for any of my gigs.


the romance

another aspect that i was let down by a lot: the romance. dare i say it, but this book suffers from the “insta love” problem. now let me explain this for a sec: i'm not talking about teens feeling intense crushes and thinking “omg they are the one for me” even though they don't know the person yet. i am talking about a character going “wow i am so drawn to her, idk why, and i need to stay with her no matter what, we will save the world together, yes we have only known each other for two days what about it?” i did not care for the romance here. it was very rushed and honestly it almost felt like it was just a rebound for the protagonist who was still in love with another girl two days ago. i could see the author trying to bring across that inner conflict, but it didn't really land.

this romance had potential to be something cute and powerful, if it had not been this rushed. of course it was fine that our protagonist was immediately attracted to her love interest, i think that is something that most people who experience sexual and/or romantic attraction have felt at least once. but it is everything that follows that initial attraction. this story takes place in the span of like 2 weeks. why are these girlies ride or die for each other after two days. it didn't help that a lot of the time of those two weeks happens off screen, which means that we don't really see them grow closer. why should i be rooting for these two, i barely know them as individuals and i certainly don't know them as a potential couple yet!!

the queer rep

we have at least four known queer characters in this book. i appreciate that.

but there's more

1) the treatment of the one gay man that appears in the story. luke doesn't appear a lot in the story itself because he is mostly locked up in some dungeon in the castle for daring to be in an altercation with some bully who forced himself onto sophia. the glimpses that we see of him include some tropes that we see a lot in media. the angsty backstory where his boyfriend and him were outed against their will and something terrible happened to his boyfriend. gay suffering as we have seen it many times before. why is it always like this. and then he gets beaten up by a guy who was essentially his school bully? luke is not having a good time, but he at least survived? yeah the bar is barely above the ground right now.2) erin and sophia's relationship. my problem lies within the crux of their “breakup”: sophia wants to basically come out and run away with erin at the beginning of the story, erin is scared and doesn't want to do that, she just wants to stick to what society tells them to do. if we ignore all of the fantasy elements it should be a very familiar trope when it comes to queer couples: partner A who wants to come out, partner B who does not want to do that yet (and usually has a very legitimate reason for that). it is a very tired trope. most of the time it is also written in a way where the one who doesn't want to come out yet is the “problem” which is just unfair. let's look at sophia and erin here. sophia was being pushy about coming out and running away. erin on the other hand was very scared because the consequences of running away would be very awful and pretty much tells sophia to move on. she wants to find some guy who will marry her at their first ball. it all climaxes at the end of the story when erin has gotten married to a horrible man who hits her and sophia tries to save her one last time. erin is suddenly ice cold and blames sophia for leaving her alone. she still doesn't want to leave and gets mad at sophia for wanting to save her. sophia gives up at that point and returns to constance.my problem is that this story blames erin for not coming out, even though her fears were absolutely valid: they live in a homophobic world and being outed might get them killed. running away isn't a great option either, they don't know where they can go, etc. i get why erin is scared. she is now stuck in an awful, abusive marriage. and she has become an asshole herself now all of a sudden. and her first love chooses the free, more interesting girl instead. all of this in the span of two weeks, by the way. it is incredibly mean towards any queer person who hasn't been able to come out (yet). i was just imagining some random queer teenage girl with parents who wouldn't be okay with her sexuality reading this book and feeling absolutely awful about herself. i don't think we need this. especially if you look at how sophia literally chooses the girl who she can be openly gay with. i know that this is a very difficult topic in real life but i wish this would be treated better in media. because if it is treated like this? you are essentially blaming someone for not coming out.