Book Review: Snow So White

Title: Snow So White 

Author: C. Gockel

Date: 2021

Publisher: cgockelwrites.com

ISBN: 9798771340203

Length: 382 pages

Quote: "His people had come from [New York]...after the Change, when Magick and Ember had swept over the world and the old electric technologies had failed. But Somer County wasn’t particularly cosmopolitan, and most families had lived here forever—like Cherie’s great-great-grandfather’s family, the Shaws, had." 

In the first volume of the "Urban Magick and Folklore" series, Cherie (short for Charmaine) from Somer County, Pennsylvania, in a thoroughly postmodern era, journeys to the enchanted slumberland known as either Hell or Chicago (in Illinois) to awaken Yukio Dewitt, a.k.a. Jack Frost, formerly nicknamed Storm King, from the enchanted sleep into which he's been cast by his mother the Wicked Queen. Not everyone in what's left of the United States wants to have a monarchy, but magical talents definitely make some people natural rulers. 

Ethnicities have been scrambled. Despite her French names Cherie is predominantly Welsh and Nigerian. We're told that Jack and Mizuki have the traditional Snow White look, black hair that makes their pale skin even more distinctive, and their magical powers are "Winter" too; Jack brings cold weather wherever he goes. Cherie, who we're told is an extrovert, and also blonde, seems to have "charm" as her main talent, but she's forced to do all sorts of things extroverts feel unable to do on her quest, which makes her a little easier to bear. Cherie has always drawn on the magic of her Nigerian grandmother, or Nnenne, while the grandmother was living. When dying the grandmother called for "Andrew." Who was he? A decent vampire, who had explained to Nnenne that the vampirism mutation is caused by inability to digest plant-based food and a real need to absorb the nutrients from said foods after they've been digested by other warm-blooded lifeforms. Most vampires are vicious anti-humans, and the decent ones are persecuted by the majority, but Nnenne wanted to let Andrew hasten her demise from cancer instead of having to kill some healthy, non-consenting animal. On her quest Cherie depends on the magic of another friendly vampire, Grendel, who is also old and whom Cherie calls Grandmother. 

The tale of Cherie's, Jack's, and Grendel's adventures is a whimsical low fantasy, not as girl-powerful as Pamela Dean's or as funny as Marvin Kaye's or as hard-hitting as Octavia Butler's. It's meant to appeal to fans of Naomi Novik, whose work I have (unpardonably) never read. It's definitely less cringe-inducing than the gruesome Grimm story or the what-were-we-thinking?-well-we-were-kids... Disney version. It will pass several hours of bus, train, or waiting room time. Four stars.

(It's not that nice reviewers give everything we read four stars! It's that nice reviewers send full-length reviews of lower-rated books to the authors and invite them to make improvements, when we have access to self-published or pre-published versions, instead of picking at the flaws in their books publicly. There was a gap in the reviews of new books, last week, because I spent a lot of time with a book that wasn't quite recommendable to a general audience--yet. This book didn't sweep me off my feet, but I'm old and tired; I can see how it might be someone else's favorite. It's recommendable.)