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Pretty much all fairy tales have a measure of darkness to them. Full of dead or abusive parents, malevolent tricksters, suffering, and torturous deaths, we’ve somehow accepted these as appropriate stories for children. There’s some wisdom in that, I suppose – these cruelties are often in service of a greater lesson, and it’s never too early to prepare kids for an unfair world. But I do think it’s much more fun when we tease out those pitch-black threads from the fabric of the story and make something that’s decidedly not for children.
The stories in these books are a mixture of retellings of the stories we grew up with and original stories that capture those same feelings, but they’re the farthest thing from child-friendly. Read with care, and don’t risk your neck around any spindles.
I absolutely love “The Bloody Chamber,” and I’ve got LaValle’s “The Changeling” stuck somewhere on my Kindle, and I have absolutely no idea why I haven’t read it yet. But ye gods, why haven’t I gotten “The Merry Spinster” yet? I have no excuses and am clearly a dreadful person. :/