Look, if I have to read one more "dark and gritty" retelling of a fairy tale where the princess wears leather pants and wields a dagger, I might actually retire. My students leave these books on my desk like they're doing me a favor. "Mr. Williams, you have to read this, it's basically Shakespeare." (It is never Shakespeare. It is never even close to Shakespeare.)
So when I started Shadow Queen—mostly to drown out the sound of the Red Line train on my morning commute—I was ready to hate it. I had my mental red pen out. I was ready to critique the prose, the pacing, the inevitable love triangle that makes me want to weep for the future of literature.
But here's the thing—and don't tell the sophomores I said this—I didn't turn it off.
The Voice That Woke Me Up
Khristine Hvam. I hadn't listened to her before. Usually, I stick to the British narrators who sound like they're reading from a leather armchair in a library that smells like old pipe tobacco. Hvam is... not that. She is immediate. She is loud.
She narrates Lorelai (our Snow White surrogate) with this specific kind of anger that feels earned. A lot of narrators mistake "strong female character" for "petulant teenager," but Hvam finds a lower register that actually sounds like royalty on the run. She understands that pause is punctuation. She hits the emotional beats without chewing the scenery.
Now, I saw some people online complaining that they wanted a male narrator for Prince Kol. And look, I get it. In a perfect world, we have a full cast. But Hvam does a serviceable job dropping her pitch. It didn't pull me out of the story. Honestly, if you can suspend your disbelief for magic apples and ogres, you can accept a woman voicing a prince. It's performance art, people. Let the actor act.
Not Your Grandma's Disney Movie
This isn't the sanitized version I read to my niece. It's bloody. There are dragons. There are hearts literally being cut out. (My mom would absolutely hate this; sorry, Ma).
Comparing this to the classics is unfair, but it reminds me a bit of how the original Grimm tales were actually terrifying warnings rather than bedtime stories. Alice In Wonderland does something similar—stripping away the Disney gloss to show the unsettling weirdness underneath. C.J. Redwine leans into the violence. It's not gratuitous, but it's there. I was listening to Chapter 14 while walking the dog, and—without spoiling it—there is a death that actually made me stop walking. It felt abrupt. Maybe a little cheap? But effective. It woke me up.
That said, the structure is predictable. It's a retelling. We know the beats. The apple comes into play. The mirror (or a variation of it) is there. If you're looking for The Sound and the Fury, keep walking. This is plot-driven brain candy. But sometimes, especially after grading 30 essays on Lord of the Flies, brain candy is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Who's This For (And Who Should Keep Walking)
If you want a fast, bloody Snow White retelling with a narrator who actually understands pacing, this one delivers. Skip it if you need literary prose or can't handle predictable fairy tale structure—you'll just get frustrated.
Mr. Williams Packs Up His Red Pen
The prose isn't going to change your life. It's accessible, it's fast, and it does the job. But the audio experience elevates it. Hvam takes a standard YA fantasy and injects enough adrenaline to keep a grumpy old English teacher listening past his stop.
My students would say this book is "fire." I would say it is a competent, engaging diversion that proves you don't need 19th-century sentence structures to tell a gripping story. Just don't expect me to admit that in class.
