I got Ballad of the Beanstalk in exchange for an honest review through TBRindr. 

It was short, and there were parts of it I really liked, but overall it had too many issues for me. 

Ballad of the Beanstalk takes place before Jack and the Beanstalk, giving the background story for some of the characters. It’s also the story of a bi  girl figuring out her love interests. And a gruesome dark fairy tale. I think it would work a lot better for people who like dark surprising endings.

I liked the classical fantasy setting with familiar characters and tropes, and how there were things I could catch that related to the fairy tale. Apart from one detail in the end I liked the layers that were added to the story and how certain things were explained.

It was a bit hard to get into because in the beginning the writing was pretty awkward. Scenes with more than two characters in them were sort of confusing, I got the feeling that names and pronouns were repeated too often to point out who was doing what, making the text stumble rather than flow. My other main issue was the gruesomeness towards the end. I’m not good with picking up hints, and there was some foreshadowing, but I was not expecting the ending to go in the direction it did. I think the gears were switched to abruptly for my liking from queer teen love story to blood magic and murder rampage. 

The main characters are Clair, a 16 year old pig farmer’s daughter mourning the death of her father , Elena, her sweetheart and the mayor’s daughter, Mack, sexy new noble boy in town confusing Clair’s heart. I liked Jacosa, the wily and snarky village witch best. There are also plenty of unlikable parents scattered about. 

The plot felt a bit disjointed to me. Queerifying a prequel to a classic fairy tale sounds great, but it felt to me like two stories that didn’t exactly merge. Clair’s coming of age and romance story on one side, and the trouble of the giant kingdom on the other. I think the reason it bothered me so much might be because after a certain point, it feels like Clair stepped into the giants’ and the witch’s preexisting stories, where she had little power to actually do anything other than run around and fetch things. And the ultimate resolution just seemed stuck on to make it fit the  on Jack and The Beanstalk. 

I liked how the Clair’s bi-ness was handled, especially how both Elena and Mack told her things people usually say to bi people, and the way these things were questioned, although it was also a bit weirdly done at times.  

Bingo squares: Own voices, title of four of more words, local to Wisconsin, Self Published