Ashleigh Paige

Also appears on The Screaming Nitpicker.After discovering Bargain eBook Hunter about a month ago, I've picked up numerous free YA ebooks, and Snow White Blood Red (along with the next two prequels, Ashes to Ashes and Cinder to Cinder and Beauty Never Dies) was one of my finds a few days ago when it was still free. Numerous friends of mine have Snow White Sorrow, the first book of the Grimm Diaries series, on their to-read list, but if the quality of the novel is anything like the quality of this prequel, I certainly won't be reading it when it comes out.The idea behind this prequel is a good one: the Evil Queen from Snow White setting the record straight after the Brothers Grimm twisted the story in order to lock immortals like Snow White, the Queen, and other fairytale people away in the Dreamworld they created. The Queen's personality is a little bland, but her narrative voice--when it's being consistent, that is--works well and the little bit of ego she shows in one passage impressed me.If only awkward phrasing, grammar flubs, basic errors in dialogue formatting, and strange figurative language didn't mess it up. The version I read is apparently improved from a previous version of Snow White Blood Red that Jace published, but there are still plenty of errors, like this:It lay grisly over the contour-lined land like a dead girl’s white coat made of the fur of dead polar bears, like a white wavy carpet that was in no way magical. The curves of the land made the snow look like there was a beautiful gigantic dead girl buried underneath it.and this:Her sucking was ticklish. After all, her teeth hadn’t grown yet so it was a funny feeling that I felt.This was not ready to be published yet. Not by a long shot.The prequel actually seems to contradict itself. In the one moment she deviates from her formal, pleading tone, the Queen says "I knew my daughter would grow up to be a kick-ass girl one day," the pithy excuse she offers is that she's been around since 1812 and seen everyone from the Brothers Grimm to Lady Gaga, so of course her language would change. But then it's explicitly stated that the Sleeping Death all the immortals are cursed with only allow the immortals to be awake and out of the Dreamworld they're trapped in for a brief period of time every one-hundred years. If this is supposed to make sense because the Queen is still able to see what is going on in the "real" world while under the Sleeping Death's curse, it's terribly explained.Since I already have the next two prequels, I'll be reading them too. I've got my fingers crossed that they will be better than Snow White Blood Red and won't waste their potential.