Maguire sets his tale of vanity and murder in 16th century Italy where the wicked queen is played by a historical domain character, Lucrenzia Borgia, sister to Ceseare Borgia who was the inspiration for Machavelli’s The Prince.

Lucrenzia is vain but her jealousy of Bianca, the girl as white as snow stems from her brother’s lecherous preference for 11 year old Bianca over her.

Yep, we’re playing with incest and pedophilia here. You know this retelling is twisted.

The story follows in a predictable retelling though one can tell that Maguire is more enamoured with the insane antics of the vicious Borgia family’s power struggles than with Bianca. One can’t blame him as the Borgias are mad, hedonistic and unashamed as they murder and manipulate people however they want with a hefty dose of a paranoia to boot. The more compelling chapters come from Lucrenzia’s POV as readers get a glimpse of her isolated childhood, backstabbing court life and the multitude of sins she comitted that lead to her downfall. It almost felt like Maguire wanted to do a story about the Borgias but he’s so well-known for fairytale retellings that he had to throw it into Snow White in order to get published.

Bianca’s chapters contrast nicely with her innocence at peril at every turn and her abrupt exile from her home, isolated as she becomes a woman but unsure of what is happening is thematically sound. I just found it disgusting as Maguire doesn’t hold back in describing the abandonment, blood, nudity and pain that follow her. It almost feels like a weird pornographic thrill of torturing her. Which I guess is an homage to the original Grimm stories that did squirm away from the erotic morbidity (I mean have you’ve read the original Little Red Riding Hood. I mean, original original!). Homage or not I was not a fan.

On a whole the story was slow, stretching out the tale of Snow to almost 300 pages when it felt finished at 200. There were some interesting elements such as having Bianca’s father being alive, sent on an impossible journey by Ceseare and he has his own odyssy home. And the dwarfs were creatively imagined as bitter stone people who wish to become individuals like humans.

But neither could rescue this book as a whole from slow pacing and attempt to be a historical-fairytale mash-up.

2 stars.