I am trying to expand my reading of late and have started to dabble a little into graphic novels/novellas. I came across Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran on Amazon and immediately purchased it because of the stunning cover art! This review WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS, so please look away now if you don’t want to know the details!
Snow, Glass, Apples
Written by Neil Gaiman
Illustrations by Colleen Doran
88 Pages, Hardcover.
A chilling fantasy retelling of the Snow White fairy tale by bestselling creators Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran.
A not-so-evil queen is terrified of her monstrous stepdaughter and determined to repel this creature and save her kingdom from a world where happy endings aren’t so happily ever after.
From the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Locus, World Fantasy, Nebula Award-winning and Sunday Times-bestselling writer Neil Gaiman (American Gods) comes this graphic novel adaptation by Colleen Doran (Troll Bridge).
Let me start off by saying that this book is NOT YA!!!! Like, not even a little. It is super dark and quite graphic, so I would place it firmly in the Adult category.
Now that we have that warning, let’s get into the good stuff! For starters, THESE ILLUSTRATIONS!!! Sweet Mother of Pearl, this book is GORGEOUS! I could happily just flip through the pages and take in all of the little details of the full page illustrations for hours. The cover image is just the tip of the iceberg for this book. I now need to look into more by Colleen Doran because she is a fabulous artist!
As for the story itself, it is DARK. I love retellings, but I did not expect this to go down the road it did. Told from the Point of View of the “Evil Queen”, we hear her side of the story in regards to her step daughter Snow White. Except the only “evil” one here is NOT the Queen. As it turns out, Snow is what can only be called a vampire. But Gaiman takes it to an even darker place and gives us the most horrific and depraved vampire ever. You know exactly why the Queen tries to deal with the issue and to have her step daughter killed, but death doesn’t stop this monster, no. It’s just SO dark.
Overall, I loved this story, but it is definitely one of those that borders on uncomfortable. I am not much for horror, so this gave me the heebie jeebies and I ended up diving straight into a YA Contemporary just to distance myself a little.
If you love dark and twisted stories, with GORGEOUS art, then this is the book for you! If you prefer your stories more lighthearted, maybe skip this one!
Megabunny Reads 
Great review! I loved this book so much. Absolutely agree with you that it’s incredibly dark and not YA! The illustrations are amazing, and I feel like I need to spend a lot more time with this book to absorb it all.
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[…] read Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman, which is a graphic novel, and I really enjoyed it. I did a full review if you’d like to check out this GORGEOUS […]
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