Second Hand Curses

I'm not sure what I expected going in to this book but it turned out really entertaining and well written. This is heavy on the action and does rely on knowledge of the more popular European fairy tales and nursery rhymes for the entertainment to come through. It's chock full of action but does manage to pack in some pretty impressive character development for a book that doesn't seem apparently concerned with it. The ending seems to set things up for a sequel so I'm hoping that will happen.

This book takes on the structure of a series of fairy tale and nursery rhyme retellings, but told through the perspective of a band of scoundrels called the Bastard Champions who go around taking up jobs for coin (getting Cinderella out of a disadvantageous bargain with a fairy godmother, for instance). While it may look like a collection of unconnected short stories, these stories actually take place in chronological order as the Bastard Champions plod their way through the land attempting to track down the notorious Blue Fairy. The action of the book is not sanitised either and can be fairly graphic and violent, although the tone is always pretty light-hearted and never too grim.

We follow fearsome trio Jack, Frank, and Marie in their journeys across the land, each of them harbouring their own curses and secrets. I enjoyed how we plunge into the action first and see the scoundrel state they've all landed up in in the present time, but slowly the adventures become a pretext for us finding out more about each of their backstories, peeling their characters back layer by layer.

Just like its main three characters, the book does have a core of fairy-tale optimism and naivete, despite its external facade of cynicism and violence. Instead of your whole “happily ever after”, we get the sense that book truly believes in the strength and power of friendship against all odds.

A short and fun read that I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys fairy tale retellings with a dash of adventure, action, and a charismatic trio that we can get behind at the center of it all.