Grimm's Fairy Stories

 

Grimm's Fairy Stories

Unknown date, unknown translation

As you know if you've been reading here recently, I downloaded a bunch of free fairy tale collections to my Kindle.  If you are considering doing the same, do not bother with this one. Almost all the stories worth reading are also in The Blue Fairy Book.

Note the title.  This is a slim selection of fairy tales, in fairly poor translation, not the full Grimm's Fairy Tales collection.  There are places where the stories seem to drop off or change direction suddenly mid-stream.  "The Little Brother and Little Sister", for example, is missing a paragraph found in other versions, which is needed to follow the plot.

A few stories seem to have no point or plot, or extraneous boring digressions, although "Catherine and Frederick" is only a little worse here than in other versions I have found. 

Only notable bits:

"Bearskin" is one that isn't in every collection of Grimm's Tales, and I found it enjoyable.  I prefer the stories like this and "The Six Swans", in which the day is won through persistence and cleverness. Also, he cheats the devil, which is always a nice touch. Many of the other stories are solved through nothing more interesting than dumb luck.

This version of "The Frog Prince" has a very beautiful beginning, but the rest of the story is disjointed, uninspired, and annoying.

Overall it was very uneven, and next time I'll search Project Gutenberg for the full tales.

2 Stars - An Okay Book