She celebrates her last expected birthday by jokingly pricking her finger on a spindle at a fairy tale themed party thrown by her best friend, Charm Baldwin and immediately falls through the multiverse into a Disneyesque, 'knock-off fairy tale' world. Sleeping Beauty obsessed Zinnia Gray is dying of Generalized Roseville Malady. Part portal fantasy, part dissertation on Sleeping Beauty adaptations, this overly complicated novella from Harrow (The Once and Future Witches) offers a layered look at how fairy tales serve as mirrors to society. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.Īt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition.

It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. “A vivid, subversive and feminist reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, where implacable destiny is no match for courage, sisterhood, stubbornness and a good working knowledge of fairy tales.” -Katherine Arden Featuring Arthur Rackham's original illustrations for The Sleeping Beauty, fractured and reimagined. Harrow's A Spindle Splintered brings her patented charm to a new version of a classic story.

A splintered spindle