Fairy tales served as medieval entertainment. They were cautionary tales, with advice about how to live your life, as much as they were fables. They were not just for children.
“Odd Magics: Tales for the Lost,” by Sarah Hoyt, is a dozen updated fairy tales, snatched from traditional roots and garbed in modern clothing. Hoyt has taken stories you read as children, giving them her unique spin.
They are all there, the Frog Prince, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and seven more. No longer set in never-never land, they take place in 21st-century America (mostly Colorado).
They are delightfully weird. Some start out with the protagonist wondering if he or she might be hallucinating or imagining things. There is often no other way to explain what occurs in our world; a giant frog dropping out of the sky, a missing glass slipper, oddly-behaving mirrors. Others begin normally before segueing into something remarkable: trips into fairyland or an enchanted ball, discovering your beloved is a fairy-tale dwarf….