You Spin Those Fairy Tales Right Round Baby Right Round

Anybody who has been following this blog at all knows I love a retold fairytale (well at least a really well written one) so when I was browsing the bookstore shelves for an completely different book imagine my delight when instead I accidentaly stumbled upon these little beauties by Jim C. Hines.  The series is comprised of four books: The Stepsister Scheme, The Mermaids Madness,  Red Hood's Revenge, and The Snow Queen's Shadow.  The books tells of the adventures of Danielle (Cinderella), Talia (Sleeping Beauty) and Snow (Snow White) who are all part of the Queen's "secret service".

 In "The Stepsister Scheme" we start of after the wedding of Danielle to her "Prince Charming" Armand.  She is introduced to Talia, an incredibly physically gifted, skilled assassin/bodyguard, and Snow a beautiful, flirty sorceress.  Danielle learns that both of the girls are refugee princesses and the Queen has taken them under her wing and formed a private team of kick ass princesses to help her with "unofficial" business. The story quickly gets under way when one of Danielle's former step-sisters kidnaps her husband and sets of a whole crazy chain of events, culminating in Armand's rescue, the announcement of a little prince to be and the bonding of eternal friendship between the girls.

"The Mermaids Madness" sees our fearless trio take on a crazed mermaid in this ingeniously twisted tale of Little Mermaid.  Queen Beatrice and Princess Daniel are tasked with the yearly renewal of peace between them and the mermaids or undine as they prefer to be called.  Instead of meeting with the king as planned they are met by his mad daughter who has been jilted by here human lover and now vows revenge on all humans. By the end of this book we see Snow's powers increase, find out how deep Talia's love for Snow is, and Queen Beatrice is grievously injured.
 "Red Hood's Revenge" takes us to Talia's homeland which gives us a whole new setting and religion to contend with.  This book also gives us another messed up fairy tale in the for of Little Red Riding Hood.  I liked this one because it really mixed up several stories into one while seamlessly moving the story along.  Roudette is an assassin who has been successful in every kill, except for Talia and she is out to remedy the situation. When finishing this books we have met Talia's son's and learned her crazy history (totally mind blowing version of Sleeping Beauty), met Talia's lover, and found out the awesome powers of Roudette's cape.
"The Snow Queens Shadow" finishes off the series. After a tragic event Snow casts a spell beyond her control and unleashes a demon that takes over her body, but she leaves behind a little help for the other two girls.  We eventually end up in Snow's home country and find out more of her story and results of her mothers madness.  She kidnaps Danielle's son to help her work stronger spells and the girls follow after.  I'm not going to tell you what happens in the end because it would spoil it for you...but it is the last book in the series.
I really enjoyed how Mr. Hines spun these characters out of these old fairy tales.  Each girl had her own personality, flaws, and strengths.  Blending the various tales together into one cohesive world, with various countries, politics and religion helping to explain some of the differences was pretty genius. The books are a lot of fun, and while there are plenty of light hearted moments and happy endings, the author does not shy away from some pretty heavy stuff. I could go on and on and on about each book, character, story and situation but I think I would rather you all go read them and then we can have a big discussion later.

Do you like the blending of different stories, or is it easier to deal with one at a time?  Do you think these are fairly original re-telling's or do you think you can only take it so far?  How cool are the covers!?!?