Bleeding Through Kingdoms: Cinderella's Rebellion

by Riley Lashea

‘For when those who mattered had their say, the fairy tales didn’t happen that way.’ The stories have all been written. Cinderella will marry a prince, allowing her to escape her heartless family. A prince will scale Rapunzel’s tower, eventually freeing her from the control of her sorceress mother. It will take the kiss of a prince to awaken Snow White, and they will ride off on his white horse. Right? Wrong. When Cinderella breaks an unknown rule and flees Prince Charming, the next thing she knows she is crossing into kingdoms she was never meant to discover, and encountering individuals whose existence she was never supposed to know about, including Rapunzel, Snow White and the Big Papa, Chauncy, Mo, Sponk, Tater, Esteban, and Baby G. At first it all seems a fantastic adventure, but it doesn’t take long to realize that Cinderella’s joyful abandon is not sitting well with everyone. Snow White’s stepmother, the beautiful but cruel Queen Ino, now wants all three of the girls dead, but she is only a servant to the master plan. Something deeper, darker, and much more powerful is working beneath the surface, toiling to put everything back the way it was intended. As strange things begin happening and people start to disappear, it will take all of the inhabitants of the Black Forest, both decent and depraved, to seize control of their land and their destinies.

Genres: Fantasy

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Riley LaShea grew up in an Ohio town that looks like a dust speck on most maps. It was boring and awful, so she got the hell out of there. Now, she doesn't know where she wants to be, so over the past several years she has lived in Nashville, Orlando, Fort Worth, Allentown, Columbus, Kansas City, Raleigh, outside LA and inside Manhattan.

She won a lyric contest judged by the Indigo Girls in high school and a screenplay contest judged by Creative Screenwriting Magazine once. Her first published novel became a bestseller at one indie bookstore in Oakland that has since gone out of business.

Known to take great risks in the noble pursuit of creativity, sometimes she prefers to just sit around eating chocolate yogurt and doing KenKen in pajama pants.

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I initially started reading Riley LaShea's fan fiction via her website. She writes excellent Women's Murder Club femslash stories and so I ordered her book. Really enjoyed the insight into alternate endings of various fairy tales, but the ending I thought was a bit of a let down. I like clear, distinct endings and this wasn't so much. All in all a good read.

[Jessica Lyons · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story was an easy and enjoyable read. The only thing about it was that the ending left some loose ends and also it left something to be desired. I really liked each character and their stories and how they all tied together towards the end but I would have enjoyed it much more had the ending been a bit more powerful. All and all, it was a well written and entertaining novel.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reads like the rough draft of what could have been a really good fantasy novel.

The plot involves a mysterious figure called Grimm who creates a land where the inhabitants are forced to act out classic fairy tales, until Cinderella decides she doesn't want to marry Prince Charming and everything falls apart.

Unfortunately, there are frequent grammar and punctuation errors, run-on sentences, and absurdly overblown descriptions. ("Something deeper, darker, and much more powerful is working beneath the surface, toiling to put everything back the way it was intended.")

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book to me was extremeley unique and that was why I loved it. Everyone knows the story of cinderella, it's a classic tale that has been used in various ways in literature. Lashea takes the tale of cinderella to a new level by taking them out of the standard archetype. To me, this tactic gave depth to the classic fairytale characters and made them much more realistic.