A Mirror Mended

By Alix E. Harrow

A Mirror Mended is the next installment in USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow's Fractured Fables series.

Finalist for the Hugo Award!

Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.

Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can't handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White's Evil Queen has found out how her story ends and she's desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone.

Will Zinnia accept the Queen's poisonous request, and save them both from the hot iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250766656

Alix E. Harrow

Alix E. Harrow is an ex-historian with lots of opinions and excessive library fines, currently living in Kentucky with her husband and their semi-feral children. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. Her full-length novels include The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches and Starling House.

Book preview

1

I LIKE A good happily ever after as much as the next girl, but after sitting through forty-eight different iterations of the same one—forty-nine, if you count my (former) best friends’ wedding—I have to say the shine is wearing off a little.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I worked hard for all forty-nine of those happy endings. I’ve spent the last five years of my life diving through every iteration of Sleeping Beauty, chasing the echoes of my own shitty narrative through time and space and making it a little less shitty, like a cross between Doctor Who and a good editor. I’ve rescued princesses from space colonies and castles and caves; I’ve burned spindles and blessed babies; I’ve gotten drunk with at least twenty good fairies and made out with every member of the royal family. I’ve seen my story in the past and the future and the never-was-or-will-be; I’ve seen it gender-flipped, modern, comedic, childish, whimsical, tragic, terrifying, as allegory and fable; I’ve seen it played out with talking woodland creatures, in rhyming meter, and more than once, God help me, with choreography.

Sure, sometimes I get a little tired of it. Sometimes I wake up and don’t know where or when I am, and feel all the stories blurring into a single, endless cycle of pricked fingers and doomed girls. Sometimes I hesitate on the precipice of the next story, exhausted on some fundamental, molecular level, as if my very atoms are worn thin from fighting the laws of physics so hard. Sometimes I would do anything—anything at all—not to know what happens next.

But I spent the first twenty-one years of my life being Zinnia Gray the Dying Girl, killing time until my story ended. I’m still technically dying (hey, aren’t we all), and my home-world life isn’t making headlines (I pick up substitute teaching shifts between adventures, and have spent the last couple of summers working the Bristol Ren Faire, where I sell the world’s most convincing medieval fashion and ephemera). But I’m also Zinnia Gray the Dimension-Hopping, Damsel-Saving Badass, and I can’t quit now. I may not have much of a happily ever after, but I’m going to give away as many as I can before I go.

I just skip the after-parties, that’s all. You know—the weddings, the receptions, the balls, the final celebratory scenes before the credits roll. I used to love them, but lately they just feel saccharine, tedious. Like an act of collective denial, because everybody knows that happily is never really ever after. The truth is buried in the phrase itself, if you look it up. The original version was happy in the ever after, which meant something like hey, everybody dies and goes to heaven in the end, so does it really matter what miseries and disasters befall us on this mortal plane? Cut out two little words, cover the gap with an -ly, and voilà: The inevitability of death is replaced by the promise of endless, rosy life.

If Charmaine Baldwin (former best friend) heard me talking like that, she’d punch me slightly too hard for it to be a joke and cordially invite me to chill the fuck out. Primrose (former Sleeping Beauty, now part-time ballroom dancing instructor) would fret and wring her pale hands. She might remind me, bracingly, that I’d been granted a miraculous reprieve and ought to count myself lucky! With an audible exclamation point!

Then Charm might casually mention my five years of missed appointments with radiology, the too-many prescriptions I’d left unfilled. At some point the two of them might exchange one of their looks, ten thousand megawatts of love so true its passage would leave my eyelashes singed, as if I’d stood too close to a comet.

And I would remember sitting at their wedding reception while they slow danced to that spacey, ironic Lana Del Rey cover of Once Upon a Dream, looking at each other as if they were the only thing in the only universe that mattered, as if they had forever to look. I would remember getting up and going to the bathroom, meeting my own eyes in the mirror before I pricked my finger on a shard of spindle and vanished.

And hey, before you get the wrong idea, this isn’t a love triangle thing. If it were, I could simply say throuple three times in the mirror and summon Charm to my bedroom like lesbian Beetlejuice. I’m not jealous of their romance—they love me and I love them, and when they moved to Madison for Charm’s internship, they rented a two-bedroom apartment without any discussion at all, even though the rent is ridiculous.

It’s just that they’re so damn happy. I doubt they’ve ever lain awake at night, feeling the bounds of their narratives like hot wires pressing into their skin, counting each breath and wondering how many are left, wishing—uselessly, stupidly—they’d been born into a better once upon a time.

But that’s not how it works. You have to make the best of whatever story you were born into, and if your story happens to suck ass, well, maybe you can do some good before you go.

And if that’s not enough, if you still want more in your greedy, selfish heart: I recommend you run, and keep running.

---

ALL THAT SAID, this particular happily ever after is a real banger. It’s another wedding reception, but this one has tequila shots and a churro cart, and every single person, including the bride’s great-grandmother, is dancing me under the table.

I showed up two weeks ago, following the distant, familiar echo of a young woman cursing her cruel fate. I landed in a palatial bedroom that looked like it was stolen straight from the set of a telenovela and met Rosa, whose one true love had choked on a poison apple and fallen into a coma. The apple threw me, I’ll admit, and it took me a while to get the hang of this place—there are more sudden betrayals and identical twins than I’m used to—but eventually I smuggled Rosa past her wicked aunt and into her beloved’s hospital room, whereupon she kissed him with such passion that he snapped straight out of his vegetative state and proposed. Rosa stopped kissing him just long enough to say yes.

I tried to bail before the wedding, but Rosa’s great-grandmother slapped the spindle out of my hands and reminded me that her wicked aunt was still out there seeking revenge, so I stayed. And, sure enough, the aunt showed up with a last-second plot twist in her back pocket that might have ruined everything. I locked her in the women’s room and Rosa’s great-grandmother put a ¡CUIDADO! sign out front.

It’s after midnight now, but neither the DJ nor the dancers are showing any signs of quitting. Normally I’d have slipped out the back hours ago, but it’s hard to feel existential dread when you’re full of churros and beer. Plus, the groom’s second or third cousin has been shooting me slantwise looks all evening, and everyone in this dimension is so dramatically, excessively hot I’ve spent half my time blinking and whispering, Sweet Christ.

So I don’t run away. Instead, I look deliberately back at the groom’s second or third cousin and take a slow sip of beer. He jerks his chin at the dance floor and I shake my head, not breaking eye contact. His smile belongs on daytime TV.

Ten minutes later, the two of us are fumbling with the key card to his hotel room, laughing, and twenty minutes later I have forgotten about every single dimension except this one.

It’s still dark when I wake up. I doubt I’ve slept for more than two or three hours, but I feel sober and tense, the way I get when I linger too long.

I make myself lie there for a while, admiring the amber slant of the street light across Diego’s skin, the gym-sculpted planes of his back. I wonder, briefly, what it would feel like to stay. To wake up every morning in the same world, with the same person. It would be good, I bet. Even great.

But there’s a slight tremble in my limbs already, a weight in my lungs like silt settling at the bottom of a river. I don’t have time to waste wanting or wishing; it’s time to run.

I pick my clothes off the floor and tiptoe to the bathroom, feeling for the handkerchief in my jeans pocket. Wrapped safely inside it is a long, sharp splinter of wood, which I set beside the sink while I dress. I can and have traveled between dimensions with nothing but a bent bobby pin and force of will, but it’s easier with a piece of an actual spindle. I’m sure Charm would explain about the psychic weight of repeated motifs and the narrative resonance between worlds if I asked, but I don’t ask her anything

Reviews for A Mirror Mended

[jmchshannon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Mirror Mended is another strong story from Alix E. Harrow continuing her version of well-known fairy tales. Instead of another princess, however, Ms. Harrow chooses to focus on the Evil Queen, which is a clever twist as we get to question what makes a person evil. I love these Fractured Fables so much. They upend these well-known fairy tales, giving them back some of the grittiness and depth lost once they were made into a Disney movie. Plus, they allow readers to fall in love with Ms. Harrow’s writing as much as I have.

[beserene · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The sequel to A Spindle Splintered, in which we discovered that the fairy tale multiverse not only exists but can be accessed by our protagonist with some very meta magic. This, like its predecessor, is a fascinating fairy tale redux with multiverse elements that create a strong metanarrative and yet still manages to make you have all the feels. Harrow turns as many tropes as possible on their heads, including and especially the classic roles of villain and hero. Well worth the read, especially for fairy tale fans.

[nbmars · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is the second in a ”Fractured Fables” series by the author. The first, A Spindle Splintered, was a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” that not only takes us through a door [one of Harrow’s favorite tropes] into the multiverse, but switches the story around to be a feminist manifesto with a lesbian slant.Zinnia Gray knew she was cursed to die on account of environmental pollution by a local corporation. No one who sustained genetic damage had survived past age 22. Thus she identified with the story of "Sleeping Beauty." Starting in childhood when she insisted on “Sleeping Beauty” character bed sheets, to being a college student majoring in Folk Studies and Anthropology at Ohio University, she made the story the theme of her life. On her 22nd birthday, however, she found a way to avoid what seemed like her inevitable death. In this sequel, protagonist Zinnia Gray is now 26. In the five years since the previous novel ended, she has continuously moved among universes in an attempt to escape her fate. She has been “diving through every iteration of Sleeping Beauty, chasing the echoes of my own shitty narrative through time and space and making it a little less shitty, like a cross between Doctor Who and a good editor.” She now considers herself not only to be “Zinnia Gray the Dying Girl,” but “Zinnia Gray the Dimension-Hopping, Damsel-Saving Badass.”She explains that to understand, one should “picture the multiverse as an endless book with endless pages, where each page is a different reality.”So far, she has met 49 varieties of Sleeping Beauty. Now, however, she suddenly gets pulled into the story of “Snow White.” Zinnia was summoned by the Evil Queen using her magic mirror, because the queen, like Zinnia, also wants to escape her foretold destiny. As she pleads with Zinnia, “Tell me how to get out of this damned story.” She has never even been given a name - she is always just “the villain, the stepmother, the wicked witch, the evil queen.” Zinnia starts calling her Eva, short for “evil queen.”They start jumping through “Snow White” stories together, and in one, it is Snow White who is evil. Zinnia says: “A confession: I was totally expecting her to be ugly. Which is pretty fucked up of me, but in my defense, Western folklore persistently and falsely equates a character’s physical appearance with their inner morality . . . ”As Zinnia learns Eva’s story, she gets another lesson. Eva is the way she is for a good reason. Her backstory and her fate are tied into her perceived “failure” as a female. It is a more nuanced situation than the fairytales - recorded by men - ever suggested. Zinnia muses, “Oh, Jesus. I’m suddenly sick of these faux-medieval worlds and their shitty gender politics, all the pretty stories we tell about ugly worlds. A terrible sympathy [for Eva] crawls up my throat and lodges there, just behind my tongue.”It also seems that Zinnia might be falling for Eva.Eva confesses to Zinnia: “All I wanted was power. . . . I know how I must sound, what you must think of me, but I only mean power over myself. Power to make my own choices, and arrive at my own ends.” Zinnia tells her, “It’s called agency. . . It’s like, the power you exert over your own narrative.” She adds: “So, the universe is like a book, right? And each world is like a page. And if you tell the same story enough times, you can bleed through to another page.” Eva then asks a question that prompts an epiphany in Zinnia: “You mean - I must write down my own story?”Zinnia comes to realize she has been trying to outrun her own ending, but maybe, just maybe, she can write a different one.Evaluation: Although this book grew on me as I continued to read, I didn’t find it as satisfying as the first book. Zinnia seemed to be running out of steam, and I got the same impression about the author. Nevertheless, Harrow never fails to be thought-provoking, offering fresh, enlightened perspectives on a number of subjects.

[librarianryan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a sequel to the Spindle Splintered and it is just as fantastic as the first book. In the second book we are still rolling through various multiverses of sleeping beauty with our main character Zinna. She has tried to get into other fairy tales but no such luck. When at the wedding of her friends, she looks into a mirror while holding the shard, and se finally travels to a new tale. She lands in front of the Evil Queen from Snow white. The Evil Queen has Zinna’s book of fairy tales. She knows what happens at the end of her tale and she demands Zinna’s help to find a new multiverse where she can have a different outcome. Along the way a mirror is broken and must be mended, but so do the hearts of characters, and the actions that go with those hearts. I loved this book beginning to end. It feels like an end. There is no need of a 3rd book, but if one comes along, I will read it too.

[bell7_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After the events in A Spindle Splintered, Zinnia Gray has been moving between Sleeping Beauty stories, rescuing heroines but skipping out before the happily ever after. Just about to leave yet another story behind, she looks in a mirror and sees an evil queen, who draws her into a brand new adventure by asking for Zinnia's help escaping her fate.I really enjoy Zinnia's smart, snarky narration and the subversive, queer, feminist take on fairy tale tropes in these two books. The ending is satisfying, but if there more to come in the series, I'm here for it.

[needmoreshelves · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love the way the author plays with fairy tale tropes, even referencing them in the work, to allow the reader to truly see how subversive her tales can be. Fantastic series!

[carolesrandomlife · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was fantastic! Zinnia has seen every Sleeping Beauty story there is in the multi-verse and she has helped them all find their own happily ever after. She is getting kind of bored of the whole thing when she sees a new face asking for help in the mirror. But this isn’t the protagonist. It’s the villain. It turns out that there might be more to this evil queen than the story suggests. I loved Zinnia’s voice and the thread of humor that wove its way through the story. I really liked the originality of this story. The author did a marvelous job of taking a familiar story and putting a whole new twist to it along with a more modern feel. This story had me cheering for the villain and questioning who really was the bad guy in the tale. I felt like Zinnia grew a lot over the course of this story and enjoyed checking in with her friends, Charm and Briar Rose, from the first book.I would definitely recommend this book to others. I do think that it would be best to read A Spindle Splintered before diving into this book because not only is it a great story but this story builds on the events from the first novella. This is an incredibly well-written and entertaining novella that will be going directly into my re-read pile. At this point, I think that it is safe to say that I will read anything that Alix E. Harrow writes.I received a digital review copy of this book from Tordotcom via NetGalley.

[tapestry100 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The follow-up to A SPINDLE SPLINTERED, Alix E. Harrow's A MIRROR MENDED finds that Zinnia Gray has possibly come to the end of her crusade to save Sleeping Beauties from their preordained fates. However, that doesn't mean her adventure has come to an end, as she is pulled into a story not hers and comes face to face with the Evil Queen of Snow White's story. As in A Spindle Splintered, though, we learn that possibly the tale we thought we all knew about the Queen and Snow White may not be the full story, and in this Fractured Fable, the villain may not be as recognizable as we think.Harrow's books are fantastic - she takes a story we're all familiar with and completely turns it on its beautiful, queer head and creates something still familiar, but oh so brilliantly fresh out it. I hope we'll be seeing more of her Fractured Fables throughout the years. A huge thanks to Goodreads and Tordotcom Publishing for an advanced print copy in exchange for a fair and honest review. Out June 14, 2022.

[firstreader-313058 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Long, long ago, fairy tales started out as oral stories passed from generation to generation. Later, the stories began to be written down time and time again, including by the brothers Grimm who wrote their own dark versions of the stories. In this retelling of the Snow White story, Zinnia Gray who has seen several permutations of Snow’s story is literally pulled into the story once again. This time, though, the Evil Queen, who gives Snow White the poisoned apple that puts her into a coma until her true love kisses her and she awakes to a happily-ever-after ending, is the protagonist of the story. Zinnia and the Queen traverse through a few versions of Snow’s story until it’s time to tell their own story.There’s only the possibility of a happily-ever-after ending, but it’s an ending full of promise and possibilities.Harrow is a talented writer who can tell a story like no one else can. She crams so much drama into a mere 144 pages while making the book hard to put down. In addition to the drama and a touch of angst, Harrow also has two of her unlikely characters fall in love. Harrow has done so much in such a small space that prior to reading her book, most readers would have said it just couldn’t be done. If you enjoy reading a detailed and well-written story with two strong women characters but can’t spare the time to read a 400+ page book, this book is for you and deserves to be at the top of your to-be-read list.My thanks to Tor Books and Edelweiss for an eARC.