The Raven and the Reindeer review

I greatly enjoyed The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher. The novel is a retelling of The Snow Queen, and it’s frankly of the best renditions of the fairy tale I’ve ever seen.

With clever, tongue-in-cheek humor and a wonderfully strange take on magic, The Raven and the Reindeer acts as a nuanced deconstruction of heteronormativity and sexism in fairy tales. The heroine, Gerta, gradually realizes her own potential as a person on her journey and falling in love with the character of the Robber Girl.

At the beginning of the novel, Gerta is a teenage girl, infatuated with Kay, the distant and aloof boy she grew up with. She says at the beginning, she doesn’t want to be like “other girls.” Her grandmother jokingly says she’ll make bright green socks, insuring she will be different from other girls.The resulting journey she goes on when Kai is whisked away in a carriage drawn by giant white otters is sweet, funny, and brutal all at the same time.

Gerta matures and discovers more about the world and herself than she ever thought possible, running into old, wise ladies and becomes friends with a snarky, yet loyal raven. She becomes more self-sufficient than ever. This version of the Robber Girl is named Janna, and she is a very well-developed and interesting character, who had to grow up much too fast and wishes to escape from her life of brutality. She has a deeply compelling character arc of her own that involves her also questioning her place in the world.

This novel is fun, exciting with lots of irreverent humor and great characters. It makes many sly references to the original fairy tale while creating its own subversive and innovative tale. If you’re looking for a good fairy tale retelling that I would definitely recommend this novel. While the word deconstruction is thrown around a lot these days, The Raven and the Reindeer is what a deconstruction should look like.