Fairytales Slashed 3

Fairytales Slashed

by Megan Derr, Mara Ismine, A.R. Jarvis

In this third compilation of fairytales, see what happens when people and places are more than they seem...

Rasnake tells the tale of a man returning home after years away, only to find his home in shambles, his Princess missing, and his brother a stranger. It will take the help of his sworn brother, a battle bonded elf, to regain his blood brother and restore the fractured kingdom...

Pretty tells the tale of a young man faced with a marriage he cannot bear to go through with, who runs away from home and finds himself stranded in a forest...

He Shall Go to the Ball is the tale of a young man whose best chance at escaping his despicable stepfather is by making the most of the fact he teased relentlessly for his feminine beauty...

Greenwood tells the story of a man who lost everything defending the man he loved, and who now spends his days as a mysterious figured in a dark hood, leading a band of thieves... and

Moth to the Flame is the tale of a man sent on assignment to a castle where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful prince. But the prince later has no memory of their night together, and the young man determines to deduce the mystery and gain back his prince at any cost.

Genres: Fantasy, M M Romance, Anthologies, Romance, Fairy Tales, Short Stories, LGBT

312 pages, ebook

First published June 29, 2011

About the author

Megan is a long time resident of queer romance and keeps herself busy reading and writing it. She is often accused of fluff and nonsense. When she’s not involved in writing, she likes to cook, harass her wife and cats, or watch movies. She loves to hear from readers and can be found all over the internet.

meganderr.com
patreon.com/meganderr
meganderr.blogspot.com
facebook.com/meganaprilderr
meganaderr@gmail.com
@meganaderr

Reviews

[Tamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rasnake by Megan Derr ★★★★
Pretty by Mara Ismine ★★
He Shall Go to the Ball by Mara Ismine ★★
Greenwood by Remington Ward - Couldn't get into the story... after trying for a whole month, I'm calling it quits and just dropping this one.
Moth to the Flame by A.R. Jarvis ★★★

[Deeze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rasnake

Megan Derr has again taken me on a magical mystery ride with a lovely healthy dose of romance.

Tallant and Milton together as brothers had me smiling and chuckling, but Tallant and Cecil had me laughing and eventually sighing in happiness. A wonderfully told tale of Magic and Dragons, sadly for me though was the fact the Dragons were baddies lol. 5 stars


Pretty

Mara Ismine gave a lovely twist on the Beauty and the Beast tale. Very enjoyable and sweet.

Vin is wonderful and I really loved Sri, but this really needs to be developed more. The beginning is perfect but then everything is rushed, plus there is no detail to certain events. I would love to give this 4 stars but the second half left me too dissatisfied. 3.5


He shall go to the Ball

Another great tale by Mara Ismine. This is my favorite take on Cinderella. I loved the whole idea and was totally wrapped up in the romance. Sadly again a far to rushed ending, in fact it didn't so much end as just stop. Just because we know there is a HEA doesn't mean we don't want to see it. Sorry but lost a star for the unfinished feel for me. 4 stars


Greenwood

Remington Ward tells a much longer and more detailed story. This was a intriguing tale of dark magic, but with a delightful light side thanks to The Troupe. So many characters I would love to see more on, especially Colby and Wyatt. Jayden amd Atherton's love story was delightful to watch come to fruition. 4.5


Moth to a Flame

I really liked this one, although I had a little trouble in the beginning. For some reason I kept seeing Moth as a child. But once the story took hold and I lost myself in the fantasy I had no more trouble.
I loved the way the Ninjas set the traps for Moth, and loved the way the palace guards set traps for the Ninjas lol. Overall a very entertaining read. Not sure I liked the ending though. Feelings of homophobia :( 4 stars

[Mandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded up to 5 because the good stories in this were just that good. :)

Rasnake - 5 stars (my favorite of them all)
Pretty - 2.5--3 stars. Started off good, but I didn't really like the last of it. The hero who changes also seemed to change his attitude (and not for the better).
He Shall Go To The Ball - 2.5-3 stars. Cute, but the just sort of ended. I would of liked to have seen what happened next.
Greenwood - 4 stars
Moth to the Flame - 4.5 stars. (this had some funny moments that were an unexpected bonus...the ninja's were awesome!)

[Pixie Mmgoodbookreviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Hearts

Review written for MM Good Book Reviews

http://mmgoodbookreviews.wordpress.com/

This is one of those rare Anthologies where you really enjoy all the stories and not a select few.


Title: Rasnake, Author: Megan Derr, Length: Short (68pgs), Heart: 5

Review: Milton is returning home after 12 long years with his Elf battle bonded, sworn brother Tallant, he returns to chaos, the Kingdom invaded by Dragon’s, his Princess (Irene) is missing and his brother (Cecil) a changed hardened man. Tallant has been looking for his life-bonded ever since he was told his fate, he thinks he might have found him but first there is a Kingdom to save, a Princess to rescue and a hard shell (Rasnake’s) to crack.

A brilliantly, well written medieval feeling adventure that I really enjoyed. A very thorough short story that gets a lot of details and plot across and doesn’t leave you feeling cut short and doesn’t miss anything out. A short story that feels more like a long novella so you won’t sit there saying to yourself ‘it was to short’. A must read.


Title: Pretty, Author: Mara Ismine, Length: Short (18pgs), Heart: 4 ½

Review: Sri is fleeing his home to avoid a forced marriage to a cruel man, he wakes up with a creature hovering over him who introduces himself as Vin, he stays with Vin for a while before he faces up to the fact that he has to face his marriage and has to let Vin go.

Oh this is a really sweet story with some hot sex thrown in and a really surprising ending. Sri is a sweet young fairy; Vin is a very sweet and kind creature who I adored. Near the end Vin’s attitude changes slightly but he is teasing and also so happy to live amongst the fairy’s. It was a really good twist and Sri’s shock and horror were really well done, it took a bit of time but he got used to the change after a while as Vin was still the same Vin he fell in love with. I recommend that this one is one to read.


Title: He Shall Go To The Ball, Author: Mara Ismine, Length: Short (25pgs), Heart: 3 ½

Review: Cyn and his step-sister Ell are both treated like dirt by their step-father and his daughters, they have both come of age and Cyn wants to go to the ball to celebrate his new found adulthood, with the help of Ell they set out to find a means to go to the ball. Lauren and Ivy are cousins, neither want to marry but Lauren has no choice even though he has no interest in females, he becomes captivated by Cyn and for days after the ball searches for him. Can Ell come up with a new plan so they can all have what they want?

This is a new twist on the Cinderella tale that was very enjoyable, although the ending frustrated me as there was no conclusion and I was left hanging. Other than that it was very well written and I have to hope that maybe the author will continue the story another time. (Please with cherries and whipped cream and even sprinkles ;-)).


Title: Greenwood, Author: Remington Ward, Length: Novella (115pgs), Heart: 5

Review: Atherton is on a personal mission to save Greenwood from the evil that taints it, it almost got him once just before he first fled but now he will be as ready as possible to defeat the evil. Jayden is a Royal Sorcerer who grew up with Atherton, he’s believed that Atherton was gone forever and is at first suspicious then extremely pleased when he comes across him on his way to Greenwood. Can these two men get over the past and defeat the evil to find a way to the future.

I loved this one and I mean really, really loved it. This story is more like an adventure/epic tale which has left the way open for a sequel (fingers crossed, on knees ready to beg). It is really well written with enough action, magic and mystery to satisfy any fantasy fan but we also have the love that never was and the twist near the end. I have no choice but to highly recommend that everyone gets this anthology just for this story (lucky all the other stories are worth it as well).


Title: Moth To The Flame, Author: A.R. Jarvis, Length: Novella (85pgs), Heart: 5

Review: Moth is an assassin/ninja in training when he sent to the castle to retrieve an item for a test he is caught by a prince, Prince Aodh is very interested to find out why a ninja is in his room for a second time but is much more interested in kissing the little ninja. Things are going well until one night Aodh no longer remembers him so Moth convinces his fellow ninja’s to investigate.

A wonderfully written story that wouldn’t let me put it down. Witty, funny, a mystery to solve, jokes pulled and a passionate romance… what more could you ask for. Would love to read more about these ninja’s they were such fun.

Overall: I have got to say that this is one of the best Anthologies that I have ever read all the stories are high quality, even though there isn’t much sex you get a good feel for all the relationships and the authors are all brilliant for their wonderful ideas and brilliant stories, highly recommend this book.

[Carly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Derr and Jarvis are two of my go-to fantasy authors. I would have given the anthology 4 stars except I didn't care for Greenwood by Remington Ward and it's the longest story in the book.

[T Silver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly liked Rasnake. I hated He Shall Go to the Ball - why is it that when there is a couple of underdogs, the guy hooks up with another guy and the girl with another girl? Also, the Cinderella story is more that the bloody dress, I hate when they dress the guys like girls... (nothing against guys who like to dress like girls, just don't particularly enjoy watching...)

[Josephine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rasnake - Megan Derr: ★★★★
I think it had a bit too much dashing off towards distress for me to really love it. It made the story feel fragmented instead of a continuous narrative

Pretty - Mara Ismine: ★★
I can't stand baby talk in romantic interests since it makes them seem like they have the mental age of a child, which grosses me out for obvious reasons. In this case it is especially stupid since it just hurt him to speak and he wasn't cursed to talk like a cave troll. ProTip: there are ways to minimize words/syllables in speech while maintaining normal pronoun usage and proper sentence structure

He Shall Go To The Ball - Mara Ismine: ★★
Not my cup of tea; I didn't connect well with the characters

Greenwood - Remington Ward: ★★★
Good bones but severely lacking in execution. Odd pacing and a number of words used incorrectly were the most glaring problems

Moth To The Flame - A. R. Jarvis: ★★★★
Cute story, but it feels out of place in the collection

[Lillian Francis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rasnake by Megan Derr - 4 star. Banished brothers, dragons, magic, mad kings and missing princess. All written with Megan Derr's excellent fairy tale panache.
Pretty by Mara Ismine - this was cute but it finished too abruptly, wrapping up what I thought was a major issue in a couple of paragraphs.
He Shall Go To The Ball by Mara Ismine - this was a sweet take on the Cinderella story. Unfortunately it ended without a proper resolution.
Greenwood by Remington Ward - 5 stars. A magic loose reworking of the Robin Hood story. I adored this.
Moth To The Flame by A.R. Jarvis - 5 stars. Ninjas, people. Do I need to say more? It's well written and funny with a passionate (although low steam) pairing. And ninjas!

This is an excellent anthology. I'd be hard pressed to pick my favourite.

[Cryselle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rasnake by Megan Derr

Told from the POV of Tallant, the elf and the outsider, we see a kingdom brought to its knees by the weaknesses of its ruler. Tallant’s sworn battle-mate, Milton, is returning home after an absence of years, to find that his younger brother Cecil is doing his best to hold the place together. By necessity, Cecil’s become a much harder man than the dreamy scholar he’d been as a boy. Beset by dragons coming through the crumbling wards, and now with mysterious kidnappings and deaths, the kingdom needs the strange skills and outside viewpoint Milton and Tallant bring home.

The source story wasn’t evident to me, which is fine: the story unfolded beautifully anyway, and the budding interest between Cecil and Tallant did not get in the way of the adventure. Certain words meant to establish setting were more an annoyance than world-building after the second repetition, and certain aspects of the physical setting didn’t make sense.

Pretty by Mara Ismine

While the story was a sweet and cute remix of Beauty and the Beast, and Sri’s problem a very real one, his attraction to Vin seems more of an escape from his problem than real love. Early in the story, Vin doesn’t come across with enough complexity to be a lover as much as a dearly beloved pet, and not just because of his speech difficulties. I wasn’t convinced that Sri really cared for Vin enough to effect the transformation, although what happened afterward certainly made me laugh. Watching Sri (Beast-Vin’s truncation of an umpteen-syllable elf name) twist in the wind once he discovers the change is funny, but jarring, given the attitudes he displayed earlier.

He Shall Go to the Ball by Mara Ismine

The original material leaps out here, but with the charming twist of cross-dressing and a helpful accomplice in Cyn’s sister, who adds another layer of romance in another direction. While we can guess at how they’re going to resolve issues, the story ends very abruptly. It really is a very large jump for the prince to go from kissing someone the prince believes is a girl at the ball, with every evidence of enjoyment, to discovering he’s kissing another man, which is better than fine, without boggling at the deception. This story feels unfinished in several directions.

Greenwood by Remington Ward

This story mixes the source material, magic, a quest, and an old love together with some imagination, but the tone of the story gets very much in the way of the adventure/fairy tale feel. There’s a lot of modern slang, which is very jarring, and a preachy tone in places that really detracts from the pleasure of the read, which is already suffering from repetition. Mix in some zombies, and we have a story that’s trying to ride a lot of trends. Had I not been reading for review, this would have been a DNF.

Moth to the Flame by A.R.Jarvis

This charming mixture of royalty and ninjas was my favorite of the collection. The matrimonial prospects of the heir to the throne are at stake, which plays havoc with the budding romance between the younger prince and the apprentice ninja he somehow captured on many levels. A little bit of magic to go with the famed ninja skills helps Moth uncover the skullduggery that has affected his lover Prince Aodh, and that threatens to take over the kingdom. There’s good balance between the external threats and the romance, and that all the sex scenes were fade to black was perfect for the story. Told with light touches of humor and the addition of some wonderful master ninjas as secondary characters, this story inspires me to find more of this new-to-me author’s work.

***

As with any anthology, some stories will be stronger than others, and what doesn’t charm me may be exactly what another reader is looking for. Unfortunately, the blurb and all stories except Moth to the Flame are plagued with enough proofing errors to intrude into the reading experience, and have content issues that are enough to bounce me out of the story. I’d be delighted to have Ms. Jarvis’ story as a standalone, but the rest could benefit from more authorial and editorial love.

[TS · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly liked Rasnake. I hated He Shall Go to the Ball - why is it that when there is a couple of underdogs, the guy hooks up with another guy and the girl with another girl? Also, the Cinderella story is more that the bloody dress, I hate when they dress the guys like girls... (nothing against guys who like to dress like girls, just don't particularly enjoy watching...)

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was slightly surprised not to like this volume as much as the preceding two, which were excellent and just what my fairy tale susceptibility needed.
To my disappointment, this time I didn't finish a couple of the stories.

The stories were:
Rasnake, by Megan Derr
Pretty, by Mara Ismine
He Shall Go To The Ball, by Mara Ismine
Greenwood, by Remington Ward
and Moth to the Flame, by A.R. Jarvis.

Rasnake was a typical Megan Derr fairy story and so I read it, loved it, and unreservedly give it 5 stars. If you want a sweet m/m retelling of a fairy story, you can't go wrong with Megan.
Pretty and He Shall Go To The Ball were a surprise to me, as I hadn't rated Mara Ismine so highly before, having not enjoyed her Yarotanji stories. These two stories were like a continuation of Megan's voice, however, and took the volume very happily to about halfway. I rate them 5 stars each too.
So far, so good. But it wasn't to last.
I couldn't get anywhere with Remington Ward's story. The language was just too difficult to read, stilted and with inappropriate word use in my opinion. Maybe it's a case of a non-native speaker writing, or maybe it's just the style, but I couldn't get into this story at all, so I skipped it. So zero stars here.
Moth to the Flame was a bit of a curate's egg - good in parts. I enjoyed it at first, despite the unpronounceable names (I wish authors would tell use how they sound when using weird names like Aodh and Beibhinn). After a while, however, the story seemed overlong, and about halfway through I lost interest. I'd give it 2 stars as the language was good and the plot could have worked, but as I said, it began to drag a bit. Maybe after struggling to try and read Greenwood, the slightly more difficult to read style of A.R. Jarvis, rather than the readable prose of Megan or Mara, made me give up.
So yeah, 3 lots of 5 stars, one zero and a 2 star. Averaging out we get 3.4 stars, rounded down to 3 stars.
I'm not sure whether to buy volume 4 of Fairytales Slashed now, as one of the stories is fem-slash, and I wouldn't read that. The others would have to be really good to carry it, and given this volume's performance, I'm really not sure it would be worth buying. A shame, as the first two volumes were stellar.
Ideally, could Megan Derr, with Sasha L. Miller and/or Mara Ismine, write any more volumes alone? That would be an instant buy.

[Nix Buttons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rasnake by Megan Derr, 2h(?), 4 stars, 15.01.20

Pretty by Mara Ismine, 0h 38min, 2 stars, 26.10.20
At first I thought this to be a really nice short story, but the ending was bad. Sri and Vin had big issues to overcome, and they did... off page -.- you can't just resolve all problems in one paragraph.

He Shall Go to the Ball by Mara Ismine, 0h 47min, 2,5+ stars, 26.10.20
nothing special, a nice short read.

Greenwood by Remington Ward, <2h 55min, 3,5+ stars, 26.10.20
A bit klischee, but very fun to read! A young lord, usurped by a necromancer four years before and now the leader of a small and close-knitted band of thieves, trying to stop said necromancer, while pining after his sercret love who thinks him dead.

Moth to the Flame by A.R. Jarvis, 3,5+ stars, 26.10.20
At the beginning I was sceptical, because of lectures like 'Stairways were the only place more dangerous for a ninja than hallways'. But as I read on I found that it is actually quite the nice and humorous story.

[PekeDevil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rasnake: 4/5 Ok, so I really liked this one. I'd have loved more interactions between the brothers and more explanation behing the king's actions, but well. They're short stories xD
Pretty: 2,5/5 It was so sweet but the ending was super rushed. We get more information and reveals in the last five paragrahps than in literally the rest of the story.
He shall go to the ball: 2,5/5 Ok, this one let me feeling a bit angry too. There are so many things mentioned in here: a war that was losed, old ladies forced, coerced and raped into marrying the new lords and two MC who are the result of this situation. They both are affected by these topics and talk about them, but then the ball comes and... That's it. A bit more and there is the end. Why mention worldbuilding and why do you give your characters such an interesting hobbies and habilities if then you're not going to use them for anything TT_____________TT
Greenwood: 3/5 It was nice and longer than the other ones, but still a bit weak at points. Nice and entertaining to read, for sure.

[Kris · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm sorry. I couldn't finish this. None of these stories stood out and I kept flipping past each story hoping that the next one would be better, but alas. It's not that these stories were bad, per say, just boring. They all kept going into one eye and out the other, I guess, if I can even write that. Maybe just not my type of fairy book, I guess...? Sorry to say but pass.

[Mara Ismine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not rating my stories - the others are fantastic.

[Cole Riann · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75 stars overall (and my favorite of all three volumes)

[Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first two stories were pretty enjoyable but all the rest ranged from boring to terrible and all of them except Pretty were way too long

[Alaska]

Rasnake 4 stars

Pretty 2 stars

He Shall Go To The Ball 1 star

Greenwood 3,75 stars

Moth to the Flame tbr

[ms.beau · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Rasnake," "Moth to the Flame" and "He Shall Go To The Ball" made this worth reading. The ending on the last was wicked!