The Adventures of Sasha Witchblood by Rose Bailey

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Adventures of Sasha Witchblood is a collection of dark fantasy stories, published in two (rather short) volumes: The Sugar House and Stars of the North. The author, Rose Bailey, has an extensive curriculum vitae in the tabletop and computer game industries. This collection draws inspiration from both the pulp-magazine fantasy of Robert E. Howard and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm . . . but it then turns both on their heads. The result is an oddly compelling set of stories.

Sasha Witchblood is an adventurer, a brute, and occasionally a murderer. She’s not quite human, marked by the blood of a famous ancestor who was more ogre than woman. Like one of her literary cousins, Conan the Cimmerian, Sasha gets into adventures, doing her best to survive them and make a little profit along the way. Again like Conan, Sasha is not a very sympathetic character – she’s too cynical and selfish for that. Although she does have a personal code that can be relied upon. Usually.

The world she lives in looks like something Robert E. Howard might have come up with as well. Ms. Bailey uses Howard’s frequent trick, borrowing from real-world history while putting her own speculative slant on it. The result is recognizable as a late-medieval Earth, but one that has been under siege by the forces of dark magic for a long time. Cities and kingdoms have been obliterated by monstrous hordes, by encroaching forests, or by never-ending winter. It’s a tough place, and only someone as case-hardened as Sasha seems likely to succeed in it.

What adventures does Sasha find herself in? The reader will probably recognize some of them: the story of Hansel and Gretel, the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the story of Sleeping Beauty, the story of Snow White. On the other hand, none of these stories are quite as the Brothers Grimm told them. We’re in the territory of the original folktales, which were often bloody and dark and decidedly not for children. It’s not always clear which character is the monster and which the hero, if indeed any of them can be called heroes.

The reader should be aware that these are not novels. Each story in the collection can stand on its own, and in fact they’re only roughly presented in the chronological order of Sasha’s career. There’s no overarching plotline to be resolved by the end of the second volume. Better to read these stories the way one might read Robert Howard’s tales, each a dark and disturbing glimpse into Sasha’s world.

Sasha’s stories are carefully composed and well written, with clean prose and very few copy-editing problems. These two volumes should work well for anyone who might enjoy a dark fantasy take on popular fairy tales, or a different slant on the fantasy of the pulp era, or both. Highly recommended.