Review of "A Mirror Mended" by Alix Harrow

I received an ARC of this book from Tor in exchange for an honest review.

As part of my Hugo Awards read-through, I read A Spindle Splintered, the previous novella in this series, and thought it was a clever idea well worth an afternoon read. In A Mirror Mended, Alix Harrow delivers more of the same, blending a range of fairy tales with modern commentary for a fast-paced and engaging story that offers a potential conclusion to this series. My review will contain spoilers for A Spindle Splintered, since it's hard to talk about this very direct sequel without touching on earlier plot points, but rest assured that neither is a book that relies on a single twist or dramatic reveal to succeed. Still, if you'd rather head into the fairy-tale-verse on your own first, read no further!

Zinnia Gray, the modern-day Sleeping Beauty turned fairy-tale Miles Morales, is back for more multiversal adventures, with the focus turned from her own rapidly advancing illness to a potentially collapsing cosmos. A Mirror Mended pivots away from the parallel Sleeping Beauties and the in-depth exploration of how one trope can be taken in different directions to give readers a look at a broader set of fairy-tale characters, most significantly the nameless Evil Queen in Snow White. Eventually nicknamed "Eva," because it's a nicer-sounding version of "evil," this classic antagonist is given some new depth as Zinnia faces the consequences of her multiverse-hopping. While A Spindle Splintered ended with other universes presented as a potential hope for Zinnia to extend her life and, in doing so, find purpose helping other parallel Sleeping Beauties, A Mirror Mended opens with those adventures serving as a literal escape from Zinnia's closest friends. As an initial impetus for the plot, this idea lacks the ticking clock that made the previous book so effective, but this issue is largely remedied by almost immediately introducing Eva as both an antagonist who forces Zinnia to keep moving and a co-protagonist whose quest for freedom eventually becomes enough to impel the plot forward on its own. The author uses Eva to bring several modern-day storytelling tropes to her fairy-tale universe, some of which she cleverly lampshades in a conversation between Zinnia and one of her college professors, delivering a witty and readable take on the villain's perspective. In trying to complicate and extend the parallels between different fairy-tale characters and their roles, A Mirror Mended loses some of the Spider-verse team-up energy of A Spindle Splintered, but mostly manages to fill that gap with equally engaging and fast-paced adventures. Zinnia's voice and the combination of fairy tale stories with modern culture and sensibilities continue to make for a good combination, and while the book's ending is satisfyingly conclusive, a return to this world would be neither impossible nor begrudged.

Four out of five stars. Read A Spindle Splintered first; they're both short and quick reads, perfect for summer.