House Read – Six-Gun Snow White

What I’m Reading: Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente
Publisher: Saga Press, 2015 (Originally published by Subterranean Press, 2013)
Cover Artist: Charlie Bowater
Read This: when you’ve spent too much time with your family during the holidays. You’ll feel better. Probably.

Cat Valente writes unusual books. They’re awesome, but they’re not really like other things. Or, they are, but I don’t know what those things are.
They hit me in the same place that Poppy Z. Brite hit me back in the day. They’re not like that, they just fill the same place in my soul. Some of Seanan McGuire’s work, like Indexing, has a similar feel. It’s the fairy tales. I’m a sucker for them. Especially if they’ve been honed and brightened and cut you like a knife while you’re reading them.
Six-Gun Snow White is about a Snow White who is half Crow, half white. She flees from her stepmother who gave her her mocking name into Indian Country, hoping to find a home. And she does, of a sort, with seven furies; other women who have come to live outside society’s conventions.
The story plays out the way you learned. Up to a point. But Cat will never give you exactly what you expect.

This is a novella, and was nominated for the Hugo and the Locus in 2014 and the Nebula in 2013. So, it’s quality work. It’s also a fast read. It comes in at 153 pages in this edition, so it’s a good read to fit in around your holiday madness.