Fairy tales are essentially fantasy narratives, but there are plenty of fantasy stories that don’t fit the fairy tale mold. It’s an “all thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs” type of situation, but less easy to define. There are plenty of fantasy books that retell classic fairy tales and Rachel Ayers has you covered on that front, having collected retellings of “Rapunzel” and “Little Red Riding Hood” and many other fairy tales here on the site.
This list is going to focus on fantasy books that feel like fairy tales, but aren’t actually based on any of the classics. The authors of these books have written an original story, but have managed to inject it with those wonderfully familiar fairy tale vibes.
So what do I mean by fairy tale vibes? The fantasy elements usually have a whimsical and dreamlike quality; magical elements are often accepted as just the way things are, without explanation. And if you like sprawling narratives that provide detailed explanations about the background of characters and the world, look elsewhere—in fairy tales it’s common for certain people to have the quality of stock characters, filling familiar roles, however vividly and memorably. But, of course, these aren’t blanket rules, and all of these authors put their own unique stamp on the fairy tale formula. With that said, let’s get to the books…
Stardust (1999) by Neil Gaiman
Often in fairy tales, the main character is easy to root for from the outset; they’re usually brave and smart and kind. Stardust’s Tristran Thorn is not one of those protagonists (at least at first!). He has the “dreamy, far-off look” of Belle from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991), but sadly not her smarts or maturity.
Tristran lives in the little village of Wall and he’s infatuated with a girl called Victoria, who doesn’t return his affections. In a desperate (and foolish…) attempt to win her heart, he sets off on a quest to find and bring her a star that has fallen in the land of Faerie. But Tristran isn’t the only one after the star…
If you’ve seen the 2007 movie adaptation but haven’t read the book, be warned that Robert De Niro’s fabulous Captain Shakespeare doesn’t make an appearance in the original story. And while the film is overall whimsical and sparkly (much like Disneyfied fairy tales), the book has a touch of darkness and melancholy running through it (in the spirit of many classic fairy tales).
The Princess Bride (1973) by William Goldman
I grew up watching Rob Reiner’s 1987 film adaptation of The Princess Bride and I loved it so much that I thought the book couldn’t possibly be better… despite knowing deep in my bookish heart that the books often—although not always—better! It wasn’t until I was an adult that I finally gave Goldman’s novel a chance and I realized what a fool I’d been. The book certainly has differences when compared with the movie, but it’s one of those rare cases where both versions are equally incredible.
In the book, instead of the frame narrative being a grandfather reading the story to his grandson, we have Goldman realizing that his father only read him the “good parts” of the story, which was written by fictional author S. Morgenstern. Goldman takes it upon himself to present readers with an edited version of the tale which cuts out all of the boring serious parts about royal ancestry and the country’s history.
What we’re left with is the delightfully tongue-in-cheek tale of Westley and Buttercup’s romance, plus all of the accompanying fencing, piracy, beasts, intrigue, and revenge, with hilarious commentary throughout.
Tress of the Emerald Sea (2023) by Brandon Sanderson
Tress of the Emerald Sea is set within Brandon Sanderson’s extensive Cosmere universe, but don’t let that put you off if you’ve never picked up one of his books before because Tress is also a standalone story.
Titular character Tress lives on a little island in the middle of an ocean that, instead of water, is made of green sand-like spores. If water touches these spores, there are explosive results (a fairly detailed explanation of how this all works is given!), making sailing on the sea pretty dangerous. Landlubber Tress finds herself taking to the deadly spore sea in an attempt to rescue her best friend, Charlie, who has wound up as a prisoner of the Sorceress, who lives on an island in the Midnight Sea. Chaos ensues—as does friendship, adventure, and romance.
If you’ve already read The Princess Bride, you might realize that Tress is Sanderson’s own creative take on that tale, but with Westley and Buttercup’s roles reversed. Just as with Goldman’s novel, the story has a playful tone while still being earnestly heartfelt.
Lonely Castle in the Mirror (2017) by Mizuki Tsujimura
(English translation by Philip Gabriel, 2021) If you’re after a story with a gentler pace and a more serious tone, check out Lonely Castle in the Mirror. Kokoro has stopped going to her junior high school because she’s being bullied; while home alone one day, she discovers that her bedroom mirror is a portal to a castle surrounded by water as far as the eye can see.
A girl wearing a wolf mask explains to Kokoro, along with the six other teenagers whose mirrors have led them there, that if they can find the key hidden somewhere within the castle, they’ll be granted one wish. But, of course, there are a couple of fairy tale-esque catches: if they don’t go home by 5 p.m. each day then they’ll be eaten by a wolf, and upon the granting of the wish they’ll all lose their memories of each other and the castle.
The teens do search for the key, but the quest doesn’t actually occupy that much of the story until everything really kicks off at the end. For each of them, the magical castle quickly becomes a place of solace from the cruelties of the real world. The story is really less about the magical wish and more about the turbulence of being a teenager and the beauty of friendship.
Nettle & Bone (2022) by T. Kingfisher
There’s a relatively standard glittery and romantic mold that most people think of when it comes to fairy tales about princes and princesses. In Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher breaks that mold and grinds it into dust.
Main character Marra is the third-born princess of the Harbor Kingdom and as such never expects her life to hold much royal importance. Her eldest sister goes to the vastly more powerful Northern Kingdom to become the bride of a cruel prince, but then she dies, and their middle sister is sent off as a replacement. Marra isn’t willing to lose another family member and so she sets off on a quest to kill the prince.
Nettle & Bone is full of magic—there’s a witch, three impossible tasks, a dog made only of bones, and a goblin market—but there’s also a streak of horror running through the story (the dead princess and skeletal dog may have clued you in to that!). Fear not though, while things get pretty dark, a healthy dose of humor adds some levity to Marra’s quest for vengeance.
Have you got any recommendations for fantasy books that have the comforting feeling of a fairy tale? Let me know in the comments below!
Nettle and Bone definitely comes to mind for me! I think The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck is a bit of an underrated “fairytale” book, though it has a bit of a darker lean to it
Naomi Novik’s “Spinning Silver”
Agreed – it manages to weld Rumplestiltskin to Eastern European Jewish and other folklore, and is scarily beautiful. I preferred it to Uprooted.
That one’s iffy; the original shorter story was a straight Rumpelstiltskin adaptation, but the novel expands well beyond that with the Tsar and the Duke’s daughter and all.
Uprooted has definite fairy-tale vibes, and is wholly Novik’s own, though.
Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest reminds me of old school Grimm’s fairytales where you there are some very very VERY good reasons you DON’T GO IN THE FOREST. It also has the resonance with the reader’s current circumstances that I feel is an important part of fairytales. Also, sometimes no decision is a good decision.
Loved these, and would add Rachel Neumeier’s lovely City in the Lake to the list, along with Patricia McKillip’s tiny and perfect Changeling Sea. Actually, most of McKillip’s books would fit here.
I love that someone else knows the changeling sea… I’ve always loved it. The forgotten beasts of eld fits here, as does McKinley’s aerin/hari/damar books. The Darkangel trio by Pierce also comes to mind– they are quite similar to changeling sea in feel. Also Juniper and Wild Child books by Furlong. The Perilous Guard ((sp)–it might be garde) was a favorite when I was a kid. It may not be in print any more. Also the thief books by turner for this a bit, or maybe I just love them and mention them whenever, because you should read them.
I’d meant to respond to this earlier; the book whose title you’re reaching for is The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, which has gone in and out of print several times over the decades, and was a Newbery Honor book in 1975. Curiously, there appears to be an audiobook version currently available, but no current printed or ebook edition.
Pope’s other novel is more a ghost story than it is a fairy tale, but it has enough of the storyteller’s voice about it to be worth mentioning as well; that one is The Sherwood Ring, set partly during the American Revolution and partly in the mid-20th century (which is to say, the present day when t was published in 1958). I’m particularly fond of the book, which I find at once amiable and mischievous. swashbuckling and sweet, and stage-managed with exceptional skill. I am frankly amazed that there was never a film version; it would have fit right in with the best of the old-school Disney adventures of the ’60s and ’70s, or nearly as easily under the Hallmark umbrella. (Nowadays it might well work as a streaming release; if I had the right address, I’d be extremely tempted to send a copy to Millie Bobby Brown.)
I read The Changeling Sea earlier this and loved it!
I have loved nearly everything by McKilip that I’ve read, but TCS is one of my favorites.
Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson is a rare sci-fi flavored example, if a bit dark in parts (CN for child abuse), involving a girl who is exiled with her father to an extradimensional penal colony, and becomes a queen of sorts there. as told by a benevolent machine intelligence to a sleepy child via neural implant
Most of Victoria Goddard’s work qualifies, under an expansive definition of fairy tale. The Greenwing and Dart series starts out looking like cozy mysteries in a pseudo-English rural town, with an intrigue about an inheritance thrown in, but seamlessly integrates divine apparitions, strange meetings at the crossroads, and dragons with riddles, with all the beats a European folklorist would know. The Lays of the Hearthfire take place in a different universe in the same overall setting, and are more mythic than fairy-tale per se. Political maneuvering is shown turning into myth in realtime, buult out of metaphors from the protagonist’s Polynesian-based culture, followed by some actual mytgic journeying into mysticl realms. And also lots of family stuff. It’s a really lovely series.
From the Goddard stuff, I think the recent stand-alone, The Bone Harp, feels most like a fairy tale or fable. The Greenwing & Dart books are great fun, and use a lot of fairy tale/folk tale elements, but the tone is more fantasy of manners with some extra theology.
Having now read that one, Bone Harp (and Bride of the Blue Wind, which Goddard mentions in the afterword as another fairy tale like story, that one’s in the Nine Worlds)
is much more consistently fairy-tale like than most of the Greenwing and Dart stories (aside from Saint of the Bookstore), Goddard manages the difficult feat of having a procedural mystery or comedy of manners interlace with bits like the bee dance or the riddle dragon in such a way that the tone encompasses both without conflict.
For the Lays, The Hands of the Emperor isn’t really like a fairy-tale at all, except that in a thousand years it will become one, in-universe,but At The Feet of the Sun is straight-up mythic, cover to cover
Miyuki Miyabe’s “Brave Story” is a strong choice for this category as well.
The Golem and the Jinni. by: Helene Wecker
Roses and Rot by Kat Howard is based on the story of Tam Lin.
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle is very much fairy tale. His more recent Summerlong taps into Greek mythology for its basis, but is still told as a modern fairy tale.
The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber very much has a saga and fairy tale feel to it, with an East African flavor.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern has big fairy tale vibes to it.
The Bear and the Nightingale is inspired by Russian fairy tales.
I’m delighted to see Stardust and Nettle & Bone on this list. Seconding Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and The Night Circus from others’ comments. Adding All the Murmuring Bones by A.G. Slatter, Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott, and The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean.
Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist !
Deerskin by Robin McKinley pulls off the difficult task of being both a luminous example of fairy-tale prose, and a hideously realistic portrayal of what it means to go through what the princess goes through. It is also an example of a story that is absolutely horrific and nightmarish for some people to read and absolutely nourishing and strengthening for other people–and neither group of readers is wrong.
Unfortunately, that one is based on “Donkeyskin” attributed to Perrault, so it is a retelling as opposed to an original
Can I just say that Digger, by Ursula Vernon/t.kingfisher may be the most perfect of perfect fairy tales? And it’s a web comic and graphic novel as well. Presently reprinted in the wood-based pressed flesh by that dude who is supposed to be finishing a trilogy or some kind that’s in the wind.
Nights at the circus by Angela Carter – well, anything by Angela Carter to be honest!
I’d also add Little,Big by John Crowley, and Jonathan Carroll’s works often have a sense of fairy tale about them.
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan – a novel-length version of Snow-White & Rose-Red. My memories of the original fairytale were pretty hazy and this might have added rather than detracted from my enjoyment of the book, as I had no idea as to story direction.
The column is specifically about stories that aren’t adaptations of preexisting fairy tales.
“Enchantment”, by Orson Scott Card, is a fantastic take on the Sleeping Beauty story.
[ALERT ** CURMUDGEON AHEAD ** ALERT]
Far too many of the books recommended do not fit the criteria requested in the essay – that is, “fantasy books that feel like fairy tales, but are not based on any of the classics”. This does not mean that (for example) the Novik books are bad books, it merely means that they don’t fit the requested criteria. (I’d actually disqualify Uprooted as well as Spinning Silver, on the grounds that the former explicitly invokes the Slavic figure of Baba Yaga, but I’ll also grant that that one is an edge case.)
[END CURMUDGEON MODE]
I’d suggest that what’s being sought here is a certain kind of narrative voice, one that consciously takes on the role of storyteller and establishes a clear separation between the “here and now” and the world in which the story occurs. In many cases, this is done by way of slightly archaic or formal language – see particularly McKillip and Beagle, both of whom I’d definitely endorse as masters of this sort of material. The Princess Bride takes a different tack, in which Goldman puts himself onstage as narrator, but adopts a different voice entirely for S. Morgenstern’s prose. The books I’m going to mention now strike me as having the voice of the fairy tale, even though none of them are set in classic fairy-tale landscapes.
One of them, unfortunately, is long out of print and likely to be hard to find: Star of the Sea, by Linda Haldeman, is set in the more or less modern American South, but it’s a version of that South where there’s a touch of the uncanny in the air and a hint of the wondrous out of the corner of its eye. There’s an orphanage, a parochial school, a statue that may or may not occasionally come to life, and a girl who may be a catalyst for the miraculous. This was her first published novel, so it’s a trifle rough around the edges, but it has a voice that I’d place right there in the Beagle/McKillip spectrum, evoking a sense of the timeless that transforms the ordinary.
The next two should be a bit easier to find: Fool on the Hill and Sewer, Gas & Electric by Matt Ruff (best known lately for the novel Lovecraft Country and its subsequent TV adaptation). These were his first two books, the former an unusually multi-faceted fantasy set at Cornell University (where the author was a student at the time), and the latter a near-future tale of young rebels, their yellow submarine, a bomb that thinks it’s Ayn Rand, and sharks in the (flooded) New York sewer system.
In many ways the two books are very different from each other (and indeed, Ruff has made something of a point over a long career of never writing the same novel twice). What they share, though, is Ruff’s ability to establish a sense of story that transcends the details of setting and character – in effect, a narrative voice that invokes the same sense of wonder one gets from the classic fairy tales of Grimm and Anderson, even though his settings are far more modern.
These are books that, for me, have the voice of fairy-tale at their heart, even though they’re set in more modern milieus.
The inclusion of fairy-tale figures in fairy-tale like books is part and parcel of fairy-tale creation. Baba Yaga is one of the stock characters mentioned in the column; she appears in a whole class of fairy tales that are otherwise unrelated. Uprooted and Thistlefoot partake of those roots, but are not adaptations of any preexisting stories involving or mentioning Baba Yaga.
[TL/DR summary: four lists are better than one!]
Clearly we’re of somewhat different minds regarding Uprooted, but that’s perfectly okay – literary taxonomy of this kind is often, if not always, at least partly a subjective undertaking.
That said, I think one of the reasons we’ve been struggling with that taxonomy in the present discussion is that the framework of the essay suggests an “either/or” sorting mode – that is, one set consisting of fairy tales, and the other consisting of works “with fairy tale vibes”. But both the essay’s list and our assorted suggestions can be better organized into a minimum of four sets, and probably more:
• classic fairy tales (Grimm, Andersen, etc.)• adaptations of classic fairy tales (Tender Morsels, Mercedes Lackey’s “Elemental Masters” series)• newly written fairy tales (Beagle, McKillip, Morgenstern, etc.)• works which aren’t strictly fairy tales, but nonetheless have their vibes (Matt Ruff)
The Princess Bride in particular is a taxonomist’s nightmare – we have Goldman’s “good parts” text of the original Morgenstern – but only in what the narrator acknowledges is heavily edited form, plus said narrator’s extensive commentary. And a high proportion of that commentary is on the parts of the Morgenstern text that we don’t actually have, plus assorted background information concerning Morgenstern (not to mention the histories of Florin and Guilder). All this latter material is what fan-writers and certain parts of academia refer to as “metafiction”, which is a thing unto itself – and the metafiction only gets weirder and more meta in the various anniversary editions of the book, wherein Stephen King becomes a character in the framing material….
….and if that isn’t complicated enough, I dare the gallery to go look up The Silent Gondoliers, which was published as a free-standing S. Morgenstern novel, this time purportedly rediscovered by Goldman and presented in its original form.
Gah. A note to the moderator and attendant code-wranglers: the markup for bulleted lists evidently un-applies itself when one edits a post containing such a list – unlike the markup for code denoting bold or italicized text. This is non-optimal, and should be corrected in the underlying code. Also: when I initially posted this comment, applying the bulleted list format to the relevant lines inserted bullets into the editing window, but did not insert any such bullets in the list as posted. I had to manually edit the initial post to manually insert bullet characters,
The list, formatted correctly, should (I hope) look like this:
Ooh, I love this! I’d add a lot of Susanna Clarke’s work as having this feel; she definitely draws on fairy tale mythos but creates her own tales.
I’d like the artist, Kay Nielsen, whose work is at the top of this article, to be credited.
Thanks a bunch!
Think it’s Harry Clark – but am open to correction.
Although – on closer examination – maybe it IS Kay Nielsen.
Toads and Diamonds, set in India, is a wonderful, creative novel with fairy-tale vibes. Yes, it riffs off of a classic fairy tale, but then so does Nettle and Bone, which I also love.
Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower?
I wrote my original fairy tale for grownups, In the Heart of the Linden Wood, with books like the ones named here in mind. It’s about a grieving king who has to go on a quest to save his kingdom from a major threat. While he’s on this quest, he’ll have to rescue some hostages and mend another broken heart piece by piece, all while struggling with whether he’s worthy of his crown and the memory of his late wife.
I’ve always loved a fairy tale feel to a book, and I’m excited to check out some of the ones on the list above that I haven’t read yet. (Loved Tress, by the way. She’s cheeky and smart but also flawed in the best ways possible. So good!)
Uprooted by Naomi Novik.
The Path of Thorns by A.G. Slatter does lots of wonderful things with many many fairy tale tropes.
The Ballad of Perilous Graves takes place partially in New Orleans and partially in a place called Nola, which is the spirit of New Orleans made incarnate by jazz magic,strong fairy tale vibes there
Jack Vance’s Lyonesse trilogy fits pretty neatly into this mold. Magic mirrors, prophecies, secret gardens, fairies, curses, ghosts, ambition, betrayal, frustrated love, scoundrels, spies, prison escapes, kidnapping, and revenge.
Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood goes so far as to be a fairy tale about a book of fairy tales told by a fairy tale protagonist, without having obvious-to-me direct retellings present. [If a scholar or avidly-interested person knows that her tales/characters pull on older ones, I’d love to know so please correct me!]
Garth Nix’s Frogkisser uses the obvious element of kissing frogs, but it is more a run on “you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince” as opposed to the actual Frog Prince tale.
Margaret Owen’s “Little Thieves” series has deep fairy-tale themes and although features local-gods as opposed to fairies, the mechanics of their intervention is much the same.
And I’d mention that both Princess Bride and Tress seem to me that they pull from “The Snow Queen” but that may just be a personal bent.
Fairy Tale by Stephen King is good I think. Also, his book Eyes of the Dragon.
Although Raymond Feist’s Faerie Tale is a horror novel about faeries, which is a whole other thing: stories that are literally fairy tales in that they are about Faeries, but are written in a non-fairy tale style.
I’m not sure this would count … but how about the Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle?
And it seems highly likely, based on the descriptive material to date, that his brand new/upcoming book – titled I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons – will qualify for the category.
One of my favorites in this vein is Damselle in Distress by Kiley Kellermeyer. The heroine, Damselle, was blessed/cursed by a fairy godmother with a name that makes everyone around her constantly try to turn her into a damesel in distress. Finally fed up with it when yet another knight shows up to ‘rescue’ her, she sets out armed with her trusty wooden spoon on a quest to get her name changed. She picks up several misfit companions on the way (Biddy is awesome) and encounters troubles and situations which are send-ups and homages to a number of classic fairy tales. It’s an original, funny, heart-warming story which refers to classic fairy tales but does its own thing.
Another favorite is The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. It’s a quirky story about a middle aged bureaucrat in the dreariest Big Brother bureaucracy imaginable, but he’s dealing with an orphanage of magical (and monstrous) children. Super-endearing characters with an understated and uplifting story of love and found family. It’s like a bit of the LGBTQIA+-positive Wizarding world we deserved, and just beautifully written.
The Last Unicorn. I just described it to a friend as “go in expecting a fairy tale.”
The girl who circumnavigated fairyland in a ship of her own making by Catheryne Valente!
Kazoo Ishiguro’s “The Buried Giant” Lovely story.
The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making by Catheryn Vallente
A bit late, but I just reread Brust’s Brokedown Palace and it definitely belongs here. It takes place in the same setting as most of his work, but instead of a straightforward crime story or swashbuckling adventure where the participants are mostly elves* it’s about one of the human nations elsewhere. It’s about the third son of the king who goes on a quest into Faerie (i.e. the Dragaeran empire), aided by a magical talking horse** straight out of Hungarian folklore.
*they call themselves human, but they’re tall and live for millennia, and from our perspective that’s elves
**nothing of the sort exists in Dragaera; the horse says that faerie is inimical to him, and won’t explain. AFAIK there’s never any explanation for this from the people