This was a great poetry book. I always absolutely enjoy her work and I can't wait to read more in the near future. I highly recommend it.

Fierce Fairytales is my first book by Nikita Gill. As the name implies, this poetry book contains poetic almost retellings of well-known fairytales. The black and white illustrations are a nice touch, but seem a bit repetitive. The poems are very fun and lyrical. Many of the poems are prose-like, with lyrical, flowery paragraphs rather than a more typical poem structure. My personal favorite was "The Tale Weaver". This is a great book for fans of Amanda Lovelace's books!

I was originally unable to review this title, as it was archived before I had a chance to read it. I was able to get my own copy and am updating this review to reflect my true opinions.

Liked the poems far more but those and the stories are rather hit or miss. When it’s good, it’s verrry good but the misses are just as big. Bit preachy, bit trite at times, but still one of the better modern poets.

This book is STUNNING inside and out! I absolutely love Nikita Gill's gorgeous poetry, which remind me of lyrical fairytales while also conveying powerful feminist messages.

I liked this collection but it wasn’t my favorite. Nikita Gill is a favorite poet of mine but this was more prose than poetry.

I loved this book. I don't know why it took me so long to get to it when I got it as an arc...actual years ago. This was emotionally draining in the best way and an absolute delight of read.

This collection of poems and stories takes the fairytales that we're all familiar with and turns them inside out. Gill skillfully weaves stories about princesses who don't need any rescuing, heroes scarred by life experiences, and at the heart of everything is amazement at the strength it takes to be human in a world that rewards cruelty. Definitely a collection I'll be revisiting over and over.

I have a love/hate relationship with Gill's books. I want to love them, but they fall short of expectations. My students who are lovers of Instapoetry enjoy this book.

The idea is good, the illustrations gorgeous; but the last 1/3 of the collection is just a big giant bash against men with no real fairytale link at all. It’s really too bad Nikita Gill can’t seem to understand that not all men are awful. The last few poems are very disturbing to me considering they are the most likely to be remembered (being last). It's too bad because many of the poems near the beginning of this compilation are solid, strong takes on known stories.

Great Pacing & Quotes
Gill gives us some wonderful quotes and moments in Fierce Fairytales throughout her (very) short stories and poem snippets. She has taken known fairy tales (some from around the world) and given them a darker or more realistic spin.
One example of that writing that really stood out to me (being as I have a medicated Anxiety disorder) is:
"Anxiety makes more heroes than history would care to repeat. It is better than sitting and waiting, letting the demon claw into your mind with worry. Anxious people are resourceful, they need to know how to keep the sea of panic at bay so they do not drown.”
This resonated as very true for me. Some people tell me I’m brave. But I’m really not, I just can’t stand not knowing or waiting to find something out. My lack of ability to breathe, be patient and not panic is a detriment and shows weakness more so than anything. Although I will agree with the resourcefulness comment. I have gotten good at distracting myself, calming myself down, or otherwise finding a way to not pass-out or show external signs of any given panic attack I may be having.

Pretty Isn't Enough
The idea of updating fairy tales or poems and putting them in a gorgeously bound (and illustrated) book for children/teens is wonderful. The actual production of this book is amazing. I would have cherished it as a child just for how pretty it is; even if I didn't like all the stories. I think there is probably something here for everyone; but unfortunately you have to navigate a lot of obnoxious, in your face rhetoric to find it. Gill starts us out with the tamer stories and sets the tone and mood. She lures the reader into buying into her ideas, stories and verse. Only to take the last quarter of this book bashing, and I mean declaring all out war on, men. I didn't like this. It felt too overt and just too nasty to teach children or teens.
Being upset about the inequality to date in our world is not really a useful thing to teach our children. What we need to teach them is how to stand up for themselves and speak out against those that are treating women (or others) inappropriately. This doesn't require us to fear-monger or make like all men in this world are awful. At one point I felt like maybe Gill was building a new lesbian army of teens to take over the world; that's how all out awful a lot of the last poems/stories were. Just unnecessary in my mind and not productive.

Overall
Were it not for the last quarter of the book this would probably get a four star rating from me; but I struggle to even give it three stars given how much I disliked the last few passages. Gill needed an editor or publisher that spoke up about how any boy/man that picks up her book is likely to be put off by the end. And perhaps needed to hear, in advance of publication, that many women don't take kindly to generic bashing of males. I would love to give this book to two little girls I know in order to have them use their imagination challenge their concepts of fairy tales as belonging to Disney. Sadly I'd have to rip out the last few pages and given the children know how much I love books that would cause all kinds of questions. So instead I will leave Fierce Fairytales off my gifting list and be conscious of the rhetoric around me that all the lovely children in my life (none of which are my own) may be subject to on any given day.
In order to really be an equal society we must get over our anger and remove the chip on our shoulder. The only way to true equality is to work together to level the playing field; not to get revenge and one-up anyone over anyone else. I'm disappointed that the overall point and end of Fierce Fairytales was clearly that we women need to take control of everything over our male peers.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

I really loved these poems and short prose that take on fairy tales and real issues like eating disorders and abusive relationships..

Is there anything nikita cant do? Always amazed at how deep her work resonates with me. I cant wait to see what she does next.

I enjoy Nikita Gill’s poetry. I first came across her work on Pinterest. I recently acquired the ARC for Fierce Fairytales, which has recently been released. The book is a collection of poems and short stories. What I loved the most was the poetry. I’d describe her poems as vulnerable, honest, redemptive, simple, effective, powerful, and empowering. Nikita’s strength is her simple poems. My favorite was “A Universal Truth.” The first poem and a great start to the collection.

Although the concept was good, I found the stories to be unimaginative and repetetive. Although an easy read, it was extremely hard to stay interested in.

I had not experienced the writings of Nikita Gill until recently, but I will definitely continue to check out her work. While I did not like Fierce Fairytales quite as much as Wild Embers or Nikita's contributions to Dragonhearts, there were many solid creative poems in here.

Once again, Nikita Gill kills it when it comes to poetry. I'm so happy I came across her work a few years ago because she's changed the way I think about poetry. I've always been a fan of fairy tales, so I was really excited when I came across this collection. She was able to dig into the characters within the fairy tales and really get into their mindsets, while exploring mental illness, feminism, abuse, trauma the characters experience, and even eating disorders. This is definitely a collection I'll return to.

This collection is like the Rupi Kaur of fairytales. If you like Rupi Kaur, you'll love this.

That style of poetry isn't for me. I craved more with these stories and poems, and found the message too heavy handed. But I know it will have a big audience for other readers, and I think that's good.

Thank you for the review copy Hachette Books and NetGalley. I love fairy tales, and fairy tale retellings. However, I don't love the way women are often meek and in need of rescue in classic fairy tales. That is certainly not the case in this collection. Though it took a while to get into this one, I enjoyed it.

There were a few poems of passages that really resonated with me, but overall, this collection just felt very average and very repetitive. Gill reuses many themes throughout this collection and the poems just feel very similar. I'm also not the biggest fan of modern poetry that's basically just a sentence structured like a poem.

Gill delivered everything I wanted in this collection of poems and short stories with a fairytale theme. She tackles difficult subjects like eating disorders and abuse with a creative spin and fantastical flair. Some of the selections were so unexpected that I had to reread them several times to make sure I was getting all of the flavors. I particularly loved her switch on classic tales - delivering them from the villain's point of view was so much fun. My only complaint was that there were a few poems that seemed more modern and this took me away from the overall theme of the collection.

I enjoyed how short these were. I'd often read one as I am commuting on the train and would find myself pondering it all day. A great gift book too!

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.