The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines

Danielle DeGlas, also known as Cinderella, is now married to Prince Armand, and happy as she can be. Even if she doesn't know all about how to be noble, she is trying her best to learn what she needs, even if Armand often distracts her with pleasant communication of the intimate sort.

But when Armand leaves to go on a diplomatic mission, one of her stepsisters, Charlotte, comes to see her and tries to kill her, first with a knife, and then with magic, which puzzles Danielle, because as far as she knows, none of her stepsisters know magic. She is only saved through the intervention of Talia, one of the palace servingmaids, and the sacrifice ofone of the birds she befriended when she was no better than a servant in her father's house.

Talia chases Charlotte, but she escapes. Based on what Charlotte said before she tried to kill her, the stepsisters have Armand... somewhere. Talia takes Danielle to see the Queen, Beatrice. In a secret room under the palace, Danielle and Talia meet another woman named Snow, a sexpot who knows magic. Snow (as in White) reveals Talia's real identity: Talia Malak el-Dahshat, aka Sleeping Beauty. Snow White is Ermillina Curtana of Allesandria. Both left their native lands and were taken in by Queen Beatrice. Now they serve her as a "special squad".

Snow attempts to track Prince Armand with her magic, but some other form of magic is blocking her. But the magic seems to be faerie in nature. As the only two faeries that live in the Kingdom outside the faerie Hill in Faerietown are Ambassador Trittibar and a troll who lives under a bridge in town named Brahkop. As Danielle's stepsister would never be able to get into the castle without being noted if she was going to see Ambassador Trittibar, she must have gotten her faerie magic from Brahkop instead.

But first, they go to see if the stepsisters are still in their old house, but it is empty, even Danielle's own room. Out back, the tree that once held the spirit of Danielle's mother is dying, and the three Princesses must fight a wolf-like demon called a Chirka. But as they kill it, Danielle recieves one last gift from her mother's spirit, a sword made of glass that won't hurt her.

It comes in handy when they visit Brahkop to get him to admit to helping Danielle's stepsisters. And he knows that Prince Armand has been taken to Fairytown, which is the reason that Snow's locator spell didn't work. Fairytown and the Fairy Hill within is so filled with magic that it interferes with any tracing magic on anything within its borders.

So Armand is within Fairytown, but they don't know where, exactly. As the three Princesses make their way within, they start to share stories of who they are and where they come from. Unlike Danielle, neither Snow nor Talia's stories ended happily for them, and Talia bears quite a grudge towards fairies as a result.

But as they track Danielle's stepsisters, they find that the stepsisters turned to black magic to try to bring their mother back from the dead. But instead of bringing back their mother, they brought back... someone else, with ties to Snow. Can the three Princesses survive the perils of Fairytown and get back Prince Armand, who has been charmed to love her stepsister Stacia? Or will the stepsisters be able to kill Danielle or force her back into servitude through magic while using similar fairy magic to take out Snow and Talia? Is there any hope for Danielle to find Prince Armand and keep him, her, and their child alive and free?

I liked the idea of this novel, which teams up three Fairytale Princesses to save the husband of one of them from her two, perhaps not ugly in form, but ugly in spirit, stepsisters. Each has a gift that helps her in the quest: Danielle is truly pure and good, and can talk to animals. Snow has magic and an almost unquenchable ability to charm all sorts of men through her unfettered sexuality, and Talia can use just about any weapon and has the gifts of the faeries given to her at birth: Beautiful singing voice, intelligence and dexterity.

But the faerie tales these Princesses lived through aren't the Disney versions we have come to know: Snow wasn't abandoned in the woods by the woodsman, but stayed with him as his lover until he was found and killed by the Queen. And Talia was freed from her sleep by a Prince, but he was the descendant of an Uncle who took over the Kingdom after the sleep came into effect. By the time the Prince found his way into her chamber, everyone else in the Palace had been killed, and she was raped by the Prince and only awakened at the birth of her twin sons. But when the Prince told her what had happened to the rest of her family, she slew him on her wedding night and left the Kingdom.

Likewise, the faeries are much more raunchy and earthy than any who appear in modern tales, and the mystery villain is quite cold and evil, and more than a little scary. For people who only know the defanged versions of the old faerie tales, they might find this book offensive and over the top, but those who have read the original old tales and their outcomes, this won't be much of a shock at all, and realizes the dark themes that drive the story.

This is the first book in a proposed series (probably three-part, much like Jim Hines's earlier "Jig the Goblin" series. An ad at the end of the book tells of the next one, where the three Princesses meet the Mermaid Princess, and given the original ending to that tale, I can only wonder what version will make it into the coming book. But I do want to read it. Even with the dark underpinnings of the faeries tales in this book, I enjoyed the kick-ass versions of the princesses, and want to read more of their adventures. This series was a wonderful idea.