Ash by Malinda Lo

Ash

by Malinda Lo

The haunting, romantic lesbian retelling of Cinderella and modern queer classic by award-winning author Malinda Lo--now with an introduction by Holly Black, a letter from the author, a Q&A, and more!

In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Their friendship, as delicate as a new bloom, reawakens Ash's capacity for love--and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.

Entrancing and empowering, Ash beautifully unfolds the connections between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

Reviewed by nannah on

1 of 5 stars

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Oh, boy. This was … something. It had a lot of great ideas -- a lesbian cinderella retelling with fairies involved! -- but I just couldn’t connect with it … in any way.

Content warnings:
- some very creepy possessive behavior & unequal relationship balances that you think will be the main romance until the second half of the book. Sure, this is spoilers, but it’s so bad that I almost stopped reading.
This first romantic interest knew the MC’s mother and watches the MC grow up. When he’s already an adult (like thousands of years old). It’s yeah … creepy.

After her father dies, Aisling is forced to tend to her stepmother and stepsisters’ every whim (her only joy? Reading fairy tales by the fire; hence the nickname Ash). When she takes one too many trips to the Wood, Ash’s wish of being stolen away by a fairy may just come true in the form of one named Sidhean who stakes a claim on her. Will this abusive pedophile be her Prince Charming? Ash seems to be convinced he will be until she meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, and they form a connection. Once Ash understands what love really is, will she be allowed to have it?

Listen, I know the point is that this first love interest, the fairy Sidhean, is cursed to realize what he’s doing -- and what he has done for hundreds of years (luring humans to fall in love with him, and then to later have their hearts broken) -- is wrong, and to learn that by experiencing it himself. However, you don’t realize this as a reader until basically page 200 of a 264-page book. Before that it’s really like you’re in a fairy romance novel where the MC is in a relationship with a dude who has watched her grow up, preyed upon her and groomed her into a twisted, possessive, and unhealthy relationship that you, as a viewer, are supposed (?) to find romantic (because the MC does herself: “Why had he not claimed her already? What was he waiting for?”). So, until halfway through the second half of the book, I was absolutely disgusted.

That, unfortunately, kept me from enjoying the book.

But, really, that’s not all that I didn’t enjoy. The writing style is laden with “telling” over “showing” (and I’m not sure if that was a stylistic choice, since a lot of the old fairy tales have same style -- however, for a YA book especially, it’s not a very good choice). Pages 1-13 seem like a summary I’m muddling through on Wikipedia instead of the beginning of an actual book:

”By that time the philosophers had also begun to change their approach to this people. Rather than insisting that there was no such thing as magic, they began to merely suggest that perhaps magic was not as prevalent as it once was. They asked, have you ever seen an elf? Or did you work hard on your own to build your house, to feed your children, to put clothes on your family’s backs? And gradually, the idea took root that magic was merely an old country superstition.” [p.13]

There are also some pages that can be summed up in paragraphs, and others easily woven into the storyline; there’s just clumsy writing and storytelling everywhere. There’s so much unneeded clunky backstory thrown in at random times that it feels like -- when will this story really begin? Every chapter opener (at least in the first half) opens either with tons of summary or in an essay-like format with introduction paragraphs like,

”Everything changed after her father died. Ash had known every inch of her home in Rock Hill; Quinn House was strange and large and cold. In Rock Hill, everyone knew and cherished her mother and father; here, she was pitied by others: Poor girl. Orphan. Though Lady Isobel never treated her with much fondness, now that Ash’s father was gone, she no longer tried to hide her disapproval ….

There’s also continuity errors or weird plot blips like the fairy giving her a medallion, telling her he’ll appear if she ever needs something. But when she does he has the gall to look WEARY telling her the price of the wish like he didn’t want/expect this in the first place by giving her the medallion? And things like Ash being told a page before that she could not go anywhere without a chaperone, and yet the next page she’s out alone with no explanation of how this happened.

What could have redeemed the book for me was Kaisa and Ash’s relationship, but it also lacked … anything. Every interaction was dull, every dialogue between them limited to something like, “How’s the weather? Do you want to ride today?” “Sure,” that I didn’t feel when it crossed over into a love worth fighting a fairy’s claim for.

I’m sorry, this is really so harsh. This book really does have a lovely concept; I just didn’t love much besides that. I probably missed the point of this entire novel, but I rated this on my personal enjoyment, and everything's subjective.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 9 May, 2020: Finished reading
  • 9 May, 2020: Reviewed