I loved the premise of this story, but unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations. I like how the original story was twisted into something new. The different magical elements introduced were interesting and I'm always up for LGBT+ versions of old tales. However, the execution wasn't great.

First of all, this story opens up with a rape scene. The circumstances are subtle and not clear at first, but there is obviously a lack of consent/desire. There is also another scene where neither party wants to have sex and it's just jarring and awful and feels completely unnecessary to describe. It was already made clear that the circumstances are horrible. Probably due to length of the novella (novellete?), there is just not enough emphasis or exploration on how wrong both these events are.

And then the romances in the book feel very empty and not very romantic. It all comes off as stalkerish. While I don't expect a lot of depth in character from a work this short, there's just a lack of anything that would give me a sense of the character's personalities. Descriptions are vague. The characters don't even have names. It made it difficult to care about any of them.

There is an important message about love that has substance, but it gets lost in everything else. It ultimately feels like a story with a lot of potential, but it doesn't live up to how good the premise is.

When the warning says "Walking on Knives contains some explicit content and a scene with dubious sexual consent", it's not kidding. I know there's a whole debate about whether you can say consent is "dubious", but I think I see why in this case -- in both cases the characters explicitly consent, in pursuit of a goal, without actually wanting the sex itself.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I buy any of the emotions here. It has the potential to be dark and twisty, but because I don't believe in any of the love stories, it doesn't work; it's still too much in the fairytale style, with none of the characters named. Worse, it gets confusing between all the epithets; 'the little mermaid', 'the sea-witch', 'the strange woman'... and then all the 'she did this and she did that'. In the end, I just... nah.

Honestly, I feel most sympathetic toward the Prince. I wanted to root for the little mermaid and the sea-witch's sister, but that didn't feel real. The Prince's conflict was the most real part of it, and I felt like he deserved more of an ending.

Review goes live 10/07/2017.

Walking on Knives had the potential to be a great story. A queer retelling of Little Mermaid where she falls in love with the Witch sounds amazing, but sadly, it didn’t live up to its promise and left me feeling upset.
The writing is vague and confusing, with constantly switching povs, which only added to the confusion. It didn’t help that the character voices didn’t differ at all, so it was difficult to tell who is speaking most of the time. There was also a problem with the names. Characters have descriptive name, such as the Prince, the Princess, or the Strange Woman. It wouldn’t be a problem if they were used consistently, but they weren’t.
The romance made me angry. We are never given any reason the Strange Woman fell in love with the Little Mermaid, she just does. She was unpleasant and possessive about it. Little Mermaid was rightly wary of her and avoided her, but all it took was one “I love you” for her to do complete 360° and proclaim her love too. Without any development, they are thrown into a sudden HEA that makes no sense.
The book opens with the Little Mermaid getting raped. That’s literally the first scene in the book. I don’t understand why the Sea Witch requires rape as a payment for her services, but it sets the tone for the rest of the book. Little Mermaid is clearly traumatized by said event and the Strange Woman, fully aware of what happened to her, treats her with scorn and annoyance. When she lightly asks for a kiss as a payment for a gift and Little Mermaid has a triggered reaction, she barely stops herself from calling her names. This is from the love interest.
Another, somewhat even worse scene happens when the Prince decides to save Little Mermaid’s life by marrying her, despite being in love with the Princess and being supposed to marry her the next day. They are forced to consummate their marriage (why was that necessary??) in a scene that left me deeply unsettled and left the Prince clearly fucked up. And for his act of kindness, he loses his own future with his beloved Princess. He doesn’t get any closure and we’re supposed to be okay with that.
All in all, Walking on Knives was short but managed to be crammed with unpleasant things and left me feeling very uncomfortable.

This novelette (11,500 words) is an interesting approach to Andersen's well known fairy tale about the little mermaid and her romantic sacrifice. The story is both cruel and beautiful, just like the original one. The author is nicely poetic with words, but unfortunately also often confusing, which reduced my enjoyment of the story. The author apparently wanted to stay close to storytelling in the old fashioned way, but for that reason the story lost in its clarity. Regardless of that, it held my attention and mostly met my expectations. I would gladly read any future stories by the author.

Probably more like a 2.5*

I requested this from netgalley not realising it was a novelette (I thought it was novella length or a short novel) so this is a case of me expecting something very different than I got. I felt it was really too short to develop the tale or the characters adequately. The third person narration and refusal to name the characters beyond mere titles like 'the sea witch' or 'the little mermaid' which was intended to give it a fairytale feel only made me feel detached from the characters. This had potential but ended up being so rushed that it was confusing at times and was overall quite disappointing.

"Walking on Knives", a re imagining of The Little Mermaid, is a short story, clocking in at just under 12,000 words (about 30 pages). In Chhabra’s retelling, the sea witch has a sister, who is never given a name but becomes infatuated with the mermaid and intervenes in an attempt to save her from becoming sea foam when the prince decides to marry another.

I may not be totally objective here, because I absolutely love anything to do with mermaids and sea folklore. So keeping that in mind, I’d recommend this short story. I definitely enjoyed it, but I’m not going to lie, I would have enjoyed it a lot more had it been longer. I feel like thirty pages isn’t enough for rich characterization and the exposition such a dramatic story deserves. However, I think Chhabra did a good job with the characters as far as she goes, and I kind of liked that none of the characters had names, only titles, even though I might have gotten a little confused once or twice when trying to figure out the switching observational point-of-views. I found myself rooting for the sea witch's sister and disliking the sea witch as much as I love-hate Ursula in the Disney version, and I was disappointed to come to the end so quickly.

If you’ve got a half hour to forty-five minutes, and you like re-tellings of classic folklore, give it a whirl. One sitting is more than enough, and it’s a nice break in between longer works. If, like me, you are sad to see it end, might I suggest The Mermaid’s Daughter by Ann Claycomb? It’s about the little mermaid’s family and the curse that continues down through her line. It would make a good follow up, and also has lady loves.

*I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Less Than Three Press in exchange for an honest review.*

I actually read this a short time ago, I think on the 9th of June. But had been putting off marking the read since the story itself won't be out until the end of July. A review will appear here closer to June 26th (month before publication).

This story here, like another recently read short story released through Less than Three Press, is a Fairy Tale Retelling. The Little Mermaid was originally written and released April 7 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen. Based on what I recall of the story, I'd have assumed that it was by the Brothers Grimm, considering it's bloody nature, though maybe all fairy tales are deeply and graphically bloody and violent. I know less of Andersen's stories, though. Though I have read a few non-Grimm Fairy Tales, and while the Beauty and the Beast story is deeply misogynistic (the good pretty girl is destined, and happy for it!, to be bound to a whiny violent ugly brat (really, read the original story some time, that original story beast could give some of the modern day 'alphaholes' a run for their money in being a bastard asshole)) but, other than threatening it, wasn't deeply graphically bloody.

Right, sorry, got distracted there. The original tale and the retelling is remarkably similar - though there is an addition of a sister for the Sea Witch in this story here. She takes on some of the role that had originally been given to others in the original story (with the addition of lesbianism).

Looking at the original story, this story, and the Disney film - this story here is much closer to the original story (both the original and this one promise death to the mermaid if she fails in her quest; the film promised servitude to the sea witch).

An interesting and super quick story. Satisfying.

Rating: 3.75

June 12 2017

When you open up Walking on Knives on Goodreads, you might notice that at the bottom of the summary, it says: "Walking on Knives contains some explicit content and a scene with dubious sexual consent." What may catch your interest there, if you're like me, is the last part. "Dubious sexual consent". And, again, if you're like me, you might think "Well, there's really no such thing as "dubious consent". It's either rape or sex. Consent, or no consent. This isn't a "yes, no, maybe," situation."

So, it goes without saying that Walking on Knives has a rape scene. As a warning, it's literally how the novella opens up. It's thrown at your face, with no introduction or explanation. It's there, it's happening. It's worded a little confusingly, but it's stated just right to let you know that, yes, the little mermaid gets raped in this retelling.

In addition to that, there was also another sex scene that really, truly, can and will be harmful to readers. Neither party wants to have sex, and one cries during the scene. This scene made me very uncomfortable, especially how it ends up morally ruining one character. Both the opening rape scene, as well as this scene, were mostly brushed off as normal events that happened in the story. In fact, this story might even be considered as having a happy ending, despite the ruination of multiple characters lives and morale, just because the little mermaid gets what she wants.

Chhabra's writing was also very simplistic, and, to be frank, immature, and in need of great work. I personally find it very hard to connect with characters when they are never named, and all of the characters went by titles or descriptors. The little mermaid, the strange woman, the sea-witch, the prince, the princess, the king, etc. Chhabra attempted to give Walking on Knives a sense of being a folktale with giving no names, but ultimately failed as I saw no reason to continue reading, if only to write this review.

Final Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Overall?

While I enjoyed the premise and some parts of Walking on Knives, I was extremely put off by some of the scenes. One I didn't mention was where the love interest asked for a kiss as a payment for a gift. Walking on Knives had the potential to be something beautiful and queer, but was ultimately ruined by Chhabra's choices.

Would I Recommend?

I feel as if some may enjoy this more than I have, but there was a reason most of my review included commentary on the "dubious consent" scenes. 

Trigger warning for rape/sexual assault, sexual content, and possessive love interest.

I've been interested in this book since I first heard about it so my expectations were high. Did I like it? Yes. HOWEVER, it was way too short. 32 pages are just not enough. I needed everything to move a bit slower, be more developed. It just felt rushed at times. Despite already knowing how it ends, I would totally read a longer version of this if the writer ever wrote one.

What an interesting twist on The Little Mermaid! I was unsure what to expect but I am glad I dipped my toes into this imaginative adventure! It meaningfully reflects the deals that we all make.

I liked this story but I feel like it would have been better if it was a bit longer just to flesh out the relationship development a little bit more. I liked the style this was written in, there were a lot of short almost poetic scenes that kind of fit together to make the larger story. Generally I don't like that style of storytelling but I feel like it worked for this because it's a short story and it's a good way to fit a lot of action into a little bit of page space and also gave it more of an ethereal fairytale feel. My main problem is that I don't think the relationship between the Little Mermaid and the sea witch's sister was fleshed out enough. I mean sure the witch was nice to her and helped her out but it seemed like one second she was still head over heels for the prince then two seconds later it's all 'it's you who I really love'. Definitely a fun short read though.

I had to DNF it halfway through. This could have been a great story but there is no romance whatsoever and all the rape scenes made it awful to read.

The main problem with this was that it was too short. This isn't the kind of story that can be condensed into 25 pages, as was attempted here. There needs to be time to develop the characters and relationships (especially when you're trying to convince readers that a character who is in love with someone, falls in love with someone else), and there just wasn't enough for that here.

In addition, the writing felt like it was at times pushing for purple-prose territory and failing, but failing in such a way that it wasn't particularly easy to read or compelling. The novella also opens with a rape scene, which felt totally unnecessary. All it was was a plot device to make it so that the little mermaid fears, or is at least wary of, the sea witch's sister because she shares a resemblance. There are much better ways to have that come about, and honestly it was not a scene I wanted to be reading at all, let alone as the opening scene in the novella.