[Repost from Mastodon] A few days ago I finished Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim and it's an amazing fairy tale which balances European and Asian influences almost perfectly. Based on Andersen's The Wild Swans it follows a princess whose evil stepmother turned her six brothers into cranes on a quest to lift the curse. It's clever and quite funny. This definitely should have made the Lodestar ballot if you ask me. I must admit, I was a little on the fence because the evil stepmother is such a tired mysogynist trope. But Lim cleverly subverts it in a way I have rarely seen and as a person who's lost her mother at a young age it touched me deeply. The protagonist is memorable, the love story is decent as far as YA romances go, the world is interesting, and I can absolutely see how I would have devoured this as a teenager. The only things that bothered me were a) a mention of heaven which I didn't think fit in with the rest of the mythology and b) the trope of the love interest's quirky little sister who immediately invites the protagonist into the family. I've read different versions of this character way too often by now and I think all those Alices need to retire for a while until I can stomach them again. I'm also a little tired of fairytale retellings but Lim does an amazing job here, picking my favorite tale ever and leaning heavily into the dark aspects, especially the part where the princess is accused of being a witch and sentenced to burn at the stake. It's all very dramatic and highly impressed me as a child. It was great to revisit that narrative in a completely new setting.