A story about a princess, an evil queen, a magic mirror, and a poisonous apple. Sounds somehow familiar. But the book is much more than a retold Snow White fairy tale. And there are no dwarves.
After her cousin died from accidental poisoning as a child, Anja became extremely interested in poisons and antidotes. She has a rich and doting father, and she has been able to invest all her time in the study of poisons and how to help poisoned people. She has gotten some renown. She is surprised, though, when the king comes to meet her unannounced. The king's daughter, Snow, has fallen ill. She has periods of vomiting and sickness, and periods when she is better. The best doctors have not found what is wrong with her and have started to suspect poisoning. But even if her foods and drinks are monitored as carefully as possible, nothing seems to help. How do the poisons get to her? And who is trying to kill Snow and why so slowly? Could Anja come to the castle where White lives and find out what is going on? As the question comes from the king, it isn’t something she can refuse. Anja is escorted to the castle as part of the king’s entourage. She even has two personal bodyguards, as the king is afraid that whoever is poisoning Snow might try to stop Anja from arriving at the castle.
When she gets to the castle, she is given a lavish room with giant mirrors. A former queen came from a town with the most skillful mirror workmanship and brought with her many exceptionally good mirrors. She meets Snow, who seems to be a smart child but is clearly ill. She tracks everything she eats, but nothing seems poisoned. And her symptoms don’t resemble any poison she knows. One day, when Snow doesn’t notice that anyone sees her, Anja sees her eating a strange metal-shaded apple. Anja grasps it and examines it - it looks very strange with a strange structure. After she feeds some of it to a rooster and it survives, she samples it herself. It tastes bad, but doesn’t seem to have much of an effect, until she falls against a mirror while chasing a misbehaving cat, and falls through the mirror to a strange world where everything seems to be mostly mushed colors and mirrored. What is that world? And what does it have to do with Snow’s illness? And then the story truly starts.
A pretty good fairytale-like story with an interesting protagonist. A lot happens in the book, even if the beginning was pretty slow, and it seemed not to be a fantasy at all. After falling through the mirror, there certainly were many fantastic elements with very strange, dangerous creatures living in the mirror world and even an intelligent, talking cat who was able to move between the worlds pretty freely. The writing is good and there is a nice light tone, even when some of the events are not so light. The characters are mostly well described and interesting, except perhaps the king – but he is absent for most of the book. There is some romance, also. One of the bodyguards is pretty nice and polite, and even an old spinster in her 30s is affected. Will he return her feelings? This book is another excellent possible Hugo nominee.
360 pp.
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