I wanted to like this short fiction because it's a f/f retelling of the little mermaid but I found myself more confused than not. I think the story line could have been really fleshed out and turned into a full-length novel, but as is, it was too difficult to follow and we got almost no character development.

I went into this thinking, ‘F/F The Little Mermaid retelling? Perfect! I’ll love it!’ and then…I didn’t love it so much. The plot didn’t have much meat on it and barely built up to anything – like when the climax came up I was like ‘Is this it?’

It was the whole thing of the summary sounding good and then the story turned out to be less than good. All the characters had their motivations and plans, but they had no fire to do so and when the characters have no interest in their motivations and/or plans, neither do I. And that’s where I begin to force myself to finish books.

There were also some parts where something happened and it just didn’t make sense, like SPOILER*when the little mermaid kills a deer, how did she know how to kill the deer? I’m pretty sure sea animals have different anatomy to land animals.

And another thing, maybe a bit of a spoiler – I didn’t find the romance between the sea-witch’s sister and the little mermaid to be believable. What, the sea-witch just sees the little mermaid and likes the way she looks and decides to add a clause to her (the sea-witch’s) deal? And the little mermaid only realised she also ‘loved’ the sister in like the last few hours… Yeah, sorry, not that believable to me.

I was pretty excited for this as it’s a debut novella and had heard some good things about it. Ultimately it fell very flat though. I love fairytale retellings but authors need to go beyond the source material. And while the premise of the witch’s sister falling in love with the little mermaid sounded interesting I don’t think it was really well done as none of the characters grabbed me.

Also weirdly, no one had a name, they were just all referred to by titles or their relationships with each other. Which is fine in some cases but the writing was clunky in some parts, making it difficult to figure out who was talking. I also felt that the romance was weird and unnatural, as no body actually really spoke with each other or formed a relationship and suddenly it’s a happy ending because the little mermaid realized who loved her after all.

Overall Walking on Knives was an interesting premise but ultimately fell flat for me due to clunky writing in some spots and unbelievable character relationships and romance.

I was unable to review this book because of a conflict in my schedule. Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused the publisher or the author of the work. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review for you and I look forward to reviewing for you in the future.

So. I think this is my first one starred book in a long time, I just… didn’t find anything redeemable about it. Every aspect was lacking. The plot, the world, the characters. I couldn’t find anything to hold on to and the only reason I finished it is how short it is. Don’t get me wrong, the premise is interesting and it even starts off promising but it falls flat pretty early on.

The writing is very flowery, too flowery, in my opinion, combined with all the rest, it just makes the story unnecessarily heavy and hard to read. For how short it is, I shouldn’t have been exhausted by reading it, but I really was tired when I finished it. Some word combinations and metaphors didn’t make sense so it was all around not the kind of writing I enjoy. The story had me very excited at first, that’s why I requested the book, “a dark little mermaid retelling where the mermaid falls for a witch instead of the prince”? YES PLEASE. But no.

The plot was confusing and all over the place, what made it even hard to grasp and focus on is how many POVs there were, and for something so short, it doesn’t work, especially since the voices aren’t distinct, they all read the same so it takes a couple paragraphs to know who is narrating. Also, the romance??? What was that? The witch loved her when I can count the times they interacted on one hand and the only meaningful conversation out of those is when she confessed her feelings. And the mermaid herself was pinning over the prince one moment and running off with the witch the next. None of it is developped enough to be believable. 

Also, can we talk about the opening scene? That angered me like no other. It’s a rape scene that’s not handled well. First of all, if that’s what’s called “dubious consent” in the blurb, I disagree, it’s non-consensual, it’s rape and very graphic at that. The little mermaid is raped by the sea witch (the love interest’s sister) as part of the bargain and we never know any details about said bargain. What I can call dubious consent though, is a scene towards the end where both parties don’t really wanna have sex but do it anyway. All in all. This is a huge no from me.

This was an odd one, and it came out nothing like I expected. I think I, like a lot of reviewers, have spent too much time with the Disney version. This particularly reminded me of a short film adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen version that I used to love as a child, which is not markedly different from the Disney film except in tone, and with a different ending and fewer singing animals. Having the aesthetic of that film in my head as I read this really added to the experience.

I was unsure about it at the beginning but by the end I really liked it. This is a retelling of The Little Mermaid as bleak and dark - although no more than the Hans Christian Andersen version, really -
as it is beautiful and hopeful. In addition to her voice, the little mermaid sells her body to the sea witch in exchange for legs, and every step she takes with them causes her pain. She does it anyway. There was a lot of discussion about souls that all the other versions of this that I've consumed have left out, and it was only now that I'm realising how odd that is, since gaining a soul is one of the little mermaid's ultimate goals.

This is not a retelling for everyone, but it is an interesting take on the story, and different enough that I was kept guessing. The end had me on the edge of my seat because I didn't know if everything was going to work out or not. If you like your fairytales dark and gritty instead of shiny and sweet, I definitely recommend this one.

Rounded up to 4 stars, but maybe more like a 3.75.

Trigger warnings for the fact that she does sell her body for legs, leading to a vague but very dubious sex scene at the very beginning of the book; and later when the sea witch's sister asks for a kiss in return for easing the little mermaid's pain and the little mermaid recoils, the sister is a like "she has no right to scorn me" which was a bit iffy; and they also hunt and kill a deer at one point.

Walking on Knives is a retelling of The Little Mermaid. It isn’t anything like the Disney version – it was dark, cruel and brutal at times. I do feel like readers need to be aware that there were some scenes with dubious sexual consent, so proceed with caution.

Walking on Knives ended strongly, but it did lose its way in the middle a bit and I felt the plot was confusing and messy at times. However, it was an original take on a classic fairytale. I also liked the fact that it was a f/f retelling of The Little Mermaid.

Because Walking on Knives was a novelette, I feel like it did lack some backstory that I would have liked to see, such as that relationship between the Sea Witch and her sister. I would have loved some more exploration of the characters, but it is supposed to be a novelette.

A short read that I would recommend, but I also recommend proceeding with caution.

This was a much more enjoyable version of the Little Mermaid fairy tale than Disney ever had hopes of portraying. LM is another old-school fairy tale that wasn’t about princesses and love and roses and happily ever afters, like Disney made it. The original was much darker and had a much clearer message. I feel like this reimaging did more with that original message and I really enjoyed it. The story was very short and focused more on the Sea Witch (Ursula) and her sister than it did the prince and the girl who wished for legs. The circumstances were direr, and WAY more realistic than what Disney gave us. The characters are selfish and full of self-doubt, but still try to do what’s best, even if what they think is best, well, isn’t. I also really loved how the story ended. Not everyone gets an HEA and even those that do go through way more than just not being able to talk to finally get there.

I would very happily read more from this author.

Thank you Netgalley for providing this story in exchange for an honest review.

I can never resist a Little Mermaid adaptation, and this one, though brief, is particularly creative. There are moments of real shine here, and the author pulls off the difficult feat of writing a complex story with unnamed characters. Ultimately, though, I was left wanting more -- more story, more resolution, more of the author's gorgeous prose.

The writing in Walking on Knives feels very fairy tale-like. It’s much more plot driven than character driven, and quite haunting, in many ways. (As is the original it draws from, which is much more full of despair and rage than the Disney film.) There is some very evocative imagery. It feels as if it’s told from far away, which suits the genre. This is emphasized by the fact that characters do not have names, just roles that are used to refer to them.

There is an f/f romance at the center of the story. It is presented as such, but I did not believe in it. This may partly be a function of how distant the narrative is from the characters. I did not get why the mermaid would want to be with her love interest, especially given the way this person treats her. I was not rooting for them to be together.

I am troubled by what this re-interpretation of the original story does in two core areas: representation of sex work and a disability cure narrative.

The story begins with the bargain between the sea witch and the little mermaid not just being for her voice, but also for sex. This particular narrative choice frames the entirety of the story in ways that I am deeply troubled by. At the center, this now feels like a sex work morality tale. (The original does not.) Doing sex work ruins your life, makes you unhappy, places obstacles between lovers, means your love interest will treat you like dirt and the rest of your sex life will pretty much be thwarted. On top of this, the actual sex work scene depicted in the story takes place after the mermaid has given up her voice, and is told in a way that evokes sexual assault; the consent is technically there, but the way it’s told feels like it’s both physically painful and feels awful to the mermaid. Which reads to me like a story that presents sex work as inherently sexual assault (a common anti sex work framework). Then we come to a scene where the mermaid is attempting to discern why the love interest is helping her, and again there is a sex work type bargain for a kiss, along with being treated very badly. In this scene, the mermaid remembers how terrible it felt to do sex work the first time, in a way that feels very loaded. The sex work drives so much of the story, and it’s all presented as negative in a very simple classic way, one that evokes common anti sex work narratives. I found this aspect of the retelling quite harmful.

The story also feels like a disability cure narrative to me, particularly around the pain referenced in the title. The mermaid has intense pain while walking, and then is offered something to magically stop the pain, by her love interest. This is a deeply fraught aspect of the story, especially as it then becomes a place of cruelty, bargain, and misunderstanding between the lovers. This is not an incidental cure, but one that drives the plot. I liked that it was not without consequences and strings, as that is often true about cures. But it felt too easy, the way the mermaid handled the aspects of it that were about pain and cure. As a reader who experiences pain from walking and has that as a regular part of my everyday life, it didn’t feel like this depiction of it held that experience around cure in a deep or complex way, but instead used it as a plot device, which I found troubling. I gather from comments the author has made that the magical cure shoes were the spark for the story; I really wish that this had gotten more attention in the story and were depicted with more complexity and nuance. I think this is partly a pacing issue and a length issue; the shoes appear so early in the story and much of the story felt like it was rushing along; it doesn’t linger the way Andersen’s original does. (I would have liked more lingering in general, to be truthful.)

In the original story the little mermaid has desire and agency and makes active choices and we get to see that and experience it, even as her choices lead to awful things. In this retelling, we don’t really get to see her agency as much, or her desire. We spend much more time on the way others make choices and try to manipulate her, make choices on her behalf. I missed that, missed connecting with the mermaid, missed seeing her take action. There is some action at the very end, but we just see so much reaction for much of the story that the action gets a bit lost. One of the most powerful things about the original Andersen story is the build-up of her yearning and desire. I would have loved to see that here, especially as this is a queer retelling and that feels like such a queer aspect of the original story.

Trigger Warnings: The story begins with a depiction of dubious consent/ sexual assault/sex work framed as sexual assault. (It depends on your interpretation; the publisher website refers to it as dubcon, I’ve seen reviews call it rape, I read it as sex work framed as sexual assault). Sexual coercion. Bad sex that nobody wants to be having described in detail. Relationship with love interest has elements of coercion and stalking.

I unfortunately didn't enjoy this book but thank you very much to netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this! My review is linked.

To say that I was excited for Walking on Knives would be an understatement. I mean, F/F retelling of The Little Mermaid where she winds up with the seawitch's sister?! Yes, please! Unfortunately, this short story did not work for me at all. As we already know, our unnamed little mermaid is in love with the unnamed prince and wants to be human to be with him and earn a soul. The seawitch grants her legs but every step is agony and she takes her voice as payment. But in this version, the witch's sister helps the little mermaid by making her magic shoes. And apparently they fall in love and live happily ever after.

Walking on Knives reads very much like a fairy tale, which is not my favorite style at all. It also doesn't help that there is absolutely no background story and no character development. The story jumps right in at the little mermaid and the seawitch's bargain and then moves very fast. Because of this, my brain was trying to fill in the holes with the Disney version which doesn't work at all. Why is the unnamed mermaid in love with the prince? Why does the seawitch want her voice? Why is her sister randomly in love with the unnamed mermaid? I don't know!

Almost everything about Walking on Knives was awkward. The mermaid seems really determined to get her man, which would be fine if we knew anything about her and her personality beyond that. I guess the opening scene is the seawitch raping the mermaid, but I didn't get that until I read other reviews. I honestly had no idea what was going on there, even after rereading it. A lot of the writing is very vague and confusing like that. It's also hard to tell when the POV has switched sometimes, because characters just appear and no one has names. Also, where the heck did that princess come from? And why is she a liar? And why doesn't the prince care?!

Walking on Knives was just a huge disappointment. It has the most amazing premise, but it's seriously way too short to do it justice. We're never given a reason to care about anyone. Everyone is falling in love with everyone else, and then switching, and I don't even know. It's weird.

As an avid reader, I was a bit turned off by how short and choppy all the scenes were, but when I saw that the author did poetry, I took another look at the story in a different light, and could see it being a weird combo of story-telling and poetry. A few things were personally off to me, though. If it was going to be poetic, with beautiful lines and detail, it often broke that and took on the tone of a narrator, so it was like two different things happening. Had it been consistent, I think I would've caught on earlier just what was going on with the style. But since it's also part story-telling, I really didn't like that it was called a retelling of a classic fairy tale (and my favorite one) when only the ending was retold. Yes, technically it starts from when the prince sees her on shore, but those were all brief descriptions that lead to the end, where it then took on more details and more care. It might as well had only been the ending, since I didn't even remember the beginning until writing this review.

There was no lead to the story, and I feel like the book relied on the classic's reputation to do the build up for it. I did, however, think the idea was interesting. The romance wasn't sold to me between the sea-witch's sister and the mermaid, it instead felt like I was just supposed to believe what I was being told. I wasn't persuaded. That, with what everyone did, left an odd sensation in my chest, and that negative feeling with everything else are the reasons for my rating.

I was really excited to read this book because I heard it was an f/f Little Mermaid retelling with bi rep, but it was really disappointing. The writing is poor, the story is confusing, and the romance feels forced. And that initial rape scene was so not necessary.

Walking on Knives by Maya Chhabra

TW: non-graphic rape, warned for before story starts, as well as questionably consensual sex near the end.

This novella was interesting. It is a f/f twist on the little mermaid, with two sea witches, which was neat. There was some great writing shown, but I think this story suffered because of how short it was.

One thing that bothered me was the way sex and physical touch was used as a bargaining piece in this novel, without any other option or discussion of the bargain. I really wish it had been explored more than the passing conversation that happened with the sea witch's sister.

If you want a copy, you can pick it up on Amazon.

A novelette about the Little Mermaid and the Sea Witch's sister, and their tragic, sweet romance.

The twist on this classic genuinely surprised me and engaged me. Unfortunately, and maybe it's because of the timelessness of Hans Christian Anderson's original storytelling, I was overall more interested in the changed dynamic between the Mermaid and the Prince. The original premise and build-up for their relationship was retained, so all of the readers' original investment is, too. The scene that affected me the most was <spoiler>wedding and consummation scene between the Prince and the Mermaid. Sacrifices in the name of love, good intentions from both sides but, tragic and deeply uncomfortable. I really felt for both of them. Especially knowing how the original story unfolds</spoiler>.

I didn't feel much for the strange woman and her romance with the Mermaid, unfortunately. The premise of this romance was infatuation starting from... something? from the strange woman's side, and the reciprocation came in the form of hate and fear turning into love within the space of a scene from the Mermaid's side. Contrasted with the investment readers have with the Prince and the Mermaid - the investment we come into the story with - this new romance didn't hold up as well in such a short narrative. It's definitely something that could have been changed had this been structured like a novel, with more time to explore these new aspects of the retelling get us invested. I didn't really know who the strange woman was. That may be the point, but, it didn't feel effective for building investment, which is crucial for short-form fiction. 

And, the novelette's ending with these two becoming a couple comes at the cost of misery and moral compromise for several other sympathetic characters. Is that entirely fulfilling? I didn't feel so. But, I will say, the selflessness in her love, trying to make the Mermaid happy above all, was genuinely touching.

The prose is very nice. For such a short story, a novelette, the author put effort into her writing. It was evocative, full of some really striking imagery. I love how beautiful, wild and savage it painted the mermaids.

That is a downfall too, though. At times it struck me as too consciously beautiful an example of prose - and honestly, as far as over-the-top consciously beautiful prose goes, I've read better. At times it hindered my emotional connections to the story, which is crucial for such a short piece. Sometimes I found attention drifting, the imagery getting too abstract. Many scenes I didn't feel I had complete clarity on what was actually happening.

Also, like... why... the rape on page one? It didn't add much at all to the story whatsoever. Never add rape/sexual abuse to a story if you can't follow through the after effects of such trauma, authors.

The premise of the story held much promise, yet it just felt like a summary, a collage of paragraphs taken from an actual story. Maybe as a full story it would make sense, but as it is it just feels a bit lacking.

Walking on Knives is a The Little Mermaid retelling which leans more towards the Hans Christian Andersen version but adds in an f/f romance angle. The author chooses not to name any of the characters, and while this does give Walking on Knives that real old-fashioned, fairytale feel, it's also a little distracting. I did really like her writing though and thought it had an almost poetic quality.

The story is very short -- only around 11,500 words -- and I think that's its biggest downfall. While I liked the Little Mermaid herself, the other characters were all pretty two-dimensional and could have used a lot more development. Also, because of the length, the plot seems to happen very quickly. this means that the Little Mermaid jumps from madly-in-love with the Prince to ambivalence to madly-in-with the Strange Woman in quick succession. There's a lot of insta-love here. A lot -- the Little Mermaid and the Prince, the Prince and the Princess, the Little Mermaid and the Strange Woman. Warning: There's also an opening scene where the Little Mermaid is raped by Sea Witch which I didn't think was at all necessary, and an awkward dub-con sex scene between the Little Mermaid and the Prince.

It's not an awful story, and has some interesting potential (I want to know more about the Little Mermaid and the Stange Woman together. Who is the Strange Woman? Why is the Sea Witch so awful? What happens next?) but both the length and the pacing could do with some work -- and this would probably help the characterisation and plot in turn. It just missed a few opportunities and wasn't particularly memorable.

This review will be posted on my blog, Foxes and Fairytales, on July 16.
https://foxesfairytale.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/review-walking-on-knives

I really appreciated the idea for this retelling, I just don't think the length of a novelette was enough to really bring the story across.

I thought the writing was a little wonky in places. It was hard to know who you were following a lot of the time and in general I had to go back and reread some passages because I felt like it was hard to understand what was going on.
While I was really looking forward to the f/f romance part of this story, this really fell flat for me. There's just not enough time to really establish a relationship between the two characters. I couldn't have cared less about them ending up together or not. Feelings are seemingly there from one second to the other. This aspect is where I really feel the story could improve so much if this was a little bit longer. I'm really sad about it because I think there was a lot of potential in it. Especially because I feel like the relationship between The Little Mermaid and The Prince was better established than the f/f relationship. I felt for the confusing feelings these two had for each other and actually found their development way more interesting.
Overall it was an enjoyable reading experience for me. I'd recommend it if you're super into The Little Mermaid retellings but you shouldn't expect much f/f romance going into it.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30077662-walking-on-knives" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Walking on Knives" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1493943635m/30077662.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30077662-walking-on-knives">Walking on Knives</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15225983.Maya_Chhabra">Maya Chhabra</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2054983165">2 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
I rec'd an ARC from NetGalley/Less Than Three Press in exchange for an honest review. This was a unique approach to a traditional fairy tale. Ms. Chhabra's style of writing was slightly confusing and at times seemed rushed and overall, I feel that the storyline could've been more fleshed out and thus longer. None the less, because of her adventurous approach, I'll give any future books by the author my consideration. 2 stars.
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31134832-gail">View all my reviews</a>