Hopeless

I have a couple of disclaimers to post before I offer my opinions on Deerskin by Robin McKinley. An editor sent two unsolicited copies of the novel to me back when I was still writing PBW, and when I gently refused to review them and offered to send them back she said to pass them along to interested readers. I instead packed them away and forgot about them.

Then there is my conflicted opinion of the author, who wrote one of my favorite fantasy novels of all time, Chalice. She also wrote what I consider the worst vampire romance novel I've ever read, Sunshine. I've never read an author who has polarized me more as a reader, either.

Finally, I seriously dislike children's fairytales, especially the old and gruesome variety, which to me were nothing more than psychological scare tactics to keep kids in line.

You have been warned. Also, Theo? Good call.

Deerskin is a modern retelling of Donkeyskin, an old French fairytale that deals with incest, magical transformation via animal skin and moral redemption through the usual riches-to-rags ordeal. Deerskin follows the original story fairly faithfully, although the story takes a literary path from which it often wanders off, talks to itself and occasionally shifts into stream of consciousness, which in places made it incomprehensible to me. I did keep reading in hopes it would get better, but at the two-thirds point I just started skimming my way through to the end.

I liked the writing, although it was 99% tell versus show (as most fairytales are.) Some moments in the story were quite beautiful, too. But the majority of Deerskin was gruesome, often horrific, and thoroughly disturbing. I'm guessing some of that was intended as a soapbox commentary on the inherent evils of beauty, privilege and power. Which okay, I get. Wealth corrupts. We can't all be voted prom queen. Moving on.

I think the redemption aspect of the plot is what bothered me most. The protagonist's only crime was having been born royal to indifferent parents. For this she is punished, first passive-aggressively and then horrifically, for 80% of the story. Given her upbringing (think bird in a gilded cage with no one to sing to) her escape and efforts to survive the worst of her punishments are highly implausible. She's also so traumatized (which I thought was probably the most realistic aspect of the character) I was pretty much rooting for her to die constantly after page 84.

It's not the darkness of the story that troubled me. Anne Frasier wrote one of the darkest mystery series I've ever read, and I enjoyed every word. It's about the characters and how they deal with the nightmares they must face. If your character just stumbles through life and its conflicts, as the protag of Deerskin does, then it doesn't offer much hope to the reader.

That said, I'm sure there are readers out there who enjoy adult fairytales, as this book has been touted. Like torture porn, I will never understand that, either. But now that I think about it, the only fairytales I ever enjoyed were The Princess Bride, which I thought was really clever, and The Six Swans, which had sewing in it. I'm probably the wrong reader for this book.

In the end, I think Deerskin is too dark, too packed with ordeals and suffering, and too politically motivated to offer any amount of entertainment. In other words, don't waste your money.