Review of "Dartagnan Grimm's Erotic Fairy Tales"

Dartagnan Grimm's Erotic Fairy Tales is pure literary cotton candy, lighter than air, pleasingly sweet, and thoroughly enjoyable.

I get the sense of a writer having a great deal of fun with his work. Grimm gleefully juxtaposes the syntax and cadence of traditional bedtime stories--including the sort of repetitive narrative formulas and "shaggy-dog story" structures so endearing to children-- with broad and very grownup humor including lots of bawdy anachronism and hilariously "fractured" wordplay-- think Madame d'Aulnoy meeting Mel Brooks in a locker room.

Of the eleven stories in the collection, I was most taken (and turned on) by Sleeping Beauty. Little Red Riding Hood, The Elves and the Shoemaker and the final tale, Cinderella Meets Snow White, with, as the title suggests, its wonderfully steamy menage hijinks. Grimm definitely narrates a good orgy; the imaginative, seemingly endless diversity of human and fae pairings, the variety of acts, whether pleasingly mundane, merely fantastical, or utterly--deliciously-- beyond the realm of physical possibility, are a constant delight, and help to make the collection anything but dull.

On the downside; the book is in serious want of competent copy-editing. At times I was uncertain as to whether English was the author's first or even third language. The text is riddled with far too many rooky spelling errors and grammatical faux pas. I also felt that, occasionally, Grimm missed golden opportunities to "tweak" the humorous sections, which could have been cleverer in spots. Still, I would not dismiss the book out of hand merely because it isn't exactly what I wanted or was expecting.

Those in search of something fun, light, and sexy to read on a cold winter's night certainly won't go wrong curling up with this one. Recommended.