The Reflections of Queen Snow White by David Meredith (review)

WARNING: EXPLICIT SCENES, NOT FOR CHILDREN
I received a copy from the author in exchange of an honest review 

Title: The Reflections of Queen Snow White
Author: David Meredith
Release date: October 2, 2013
Publisher: self-published
Genre: Fantasy, Fairy Tales
Buy on: Amazon
Goodreads 

What happens when "happily ever after" has come and gone?

On the eve of her only daughter, Princess Raven's wedding, an aging Snow White finds it impossible to share in the joyous spirit of the occasion. The ceremony itself promises to be the most glamorous social event of the decade. Snow White’s castle has been meticulously scrubbed, polished and opulently decorated for the celebration. It is already nearly bursting with jubilant guests and merry well-wishers. Prince Edel, Raven's fiancé, is a fine man from a neighboring kingdom and Snow White's own domain is prosperous and at peace. Things could not be better, in fact, except for one thing:

The king is dead.

The queen has been in a moribund state of hopeless depression for over a year with no end in sight. It is only when, in a fit of bitter despair, she seeks solitude in the vastness of her own sprawling castle and climbs a long disused and forgotten tower stair that she comes face to face with herself in the very same magic mirror used by her stepmother of old.

It promises her respite in its shimmering depths, but can Snow White trust a device that was so precious to a woman who sought to cause her such irreparable harm? Can she confront the demons of her own difficult past to discover a better future for herself and her family? And finally, can she release her soul-crushing grief and suffocating loneliness to once again discover what "happily ever after" really means?

Only time will tell as she wrestles with her past and is forced to confront The Reflections of Queen Snow White.

The idea of this story is, in my eyes, amazing. It is such a creative thing to do: take a fairy tale and write the (not so) 'happily ever after'.

This whole story feels like a fairy tale and the writer, David Meredith, has done a great job with that. Take a look at the opening scene:

With a shrill keen the two young hawks soared over snow-capped peaks, reveling in the newly come spring. The day was crisp and clear and even the dullest of their race would have been able to see for dozens and dozens of miles in every direction. The world spread out beneath them in helpless submission and their proud shadows ghosted across the vastness of their dominion; first over the rocky crags, then the greening slopes of the cool, grassy foothills and finally the muddy fields of the fertile bottom lands, which would soon be tilled and planted anew with wheat, hops, and barley. Together they wheeled and dove and swooped then climbed once more to do it again, rapturously sailing a sea of air a thousand feet above the dwellings of mortal men.

It is very descriptive and makes you feel like you are there and the language used makes it feel like a real fairytale.

The story is mostly about Queen Snow White and her looking back on life through the Magic Mirror used by her stepmother. All your favorite characters of the story are there, just not in the way you expect them to be.

One thing I was a bit surprised with, were some explicit and graphic scenes in the story. There is a scene of the wedding night of Snow White and Charming, where it is being said she will turn seventeen in a month and he was nearly thirty and that Snow White has no idea what sex even is. That scene kind of felt awkward, but it's just not something you expect in a fairytale! Another graphic scene has to do with Snow White feeling very depressed about not being able to have children and not being the perfect and she makes a heavy decision about it.

But besides those scenes I thought it was a wonderful story that was written amazingly. Kudos to David Meredith on that!