New Book Alert: The Fairy Tale Code (Anne Anderson Book 1) by Cameron Jace; Intricate Murder Mystery/Scavenger Hunt Adventure Brings The Truth Behind The Fairy Tale
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: I have a soft spot for books and movies that involve treasure and scavenger hunts that provide answers towards history and legends' greatest mysteries. Stuff like The Da Vinci Code, National Treasure, The Indiana Jones movies, Avanti Centrae's Van Ops Series. Plus, I love History Channel documentary series like The Unxplained, History's Greatest Mysteries, and the various series on the Travel Channel hosted by Don Wildman.
Whether you believe the claims in them, the quests are suspenseful and intricate especially with how the clues and codes are joined together. Questions are asked, theories imposed, and fascinating things even some potential answers are discovered. They make you look at things differently and see that often times there is more behind what we learn and read. At the very least, the claims are fun to speculate upon.
Adding to this subgenre is Cameron Jace's The Fairy Tale Code, the first in his Anne Anderson series. This one takes that type of high adventure and mystery into the world of fairy tales, particularly those gathered by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
Folklorist Anne Anderson is called to appraise a copy of the presumed first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Realizing that the book is a fake (and threatened not to reveal it), Anne is then called to solve a bigger mystery. DCI David Tale and his team investigate a woman's body hung on a cross in Lady Chapel Westminster Abbey. There are a few clues pointing to a potential connection to fairy tales as well as a coded message to locate Anne.
No, Anne doesn't know why there is a message singling her out nor does she know who the woman is. However, the clues lead to a trail in Germany known as the Fairy Tale Road, the real life locations of the inspirations to many famous fairy tales. This clue sends David and Anne on the run to solve the clues and find out the mystery.
In the meantime, they are being stalked by various strange characters: Tom Jon Gray, who operates on behalf of the British Royal Family, Jacqueline de Rais and Franz Xaver who are trying to preserve their family's names and legacies, Lt. Wolfe, an intense and violent cop from Germany, Bloody Mary Harper, David's sadistic former colleague who has a vicious streak, The Advocate, a mysterious creepy character who pulls everyone's strings, and (my personal favorite characters) The Ortizes, a family of seven sisters, most of them little people, who either are trying to harm or help Anne and certainly have their own strange secrets and rituals.
I love how intricate the creation and execution of the quest is where each clue leads to a specific location and gives a little more about the history of the participants and their involvement in fairy tales. For example, a picture on a laptop of the WWII-era Ortiz Sisters, aka The Seven Dwarves, reveal that the Ortiz involvement in the fairy tale world goes very deep. Also, the location of the shot is Polle, the site of the real story behind Cinderella. It must have been quite an impressive feat for Jace to create the clues and codes that lead to each solution and each place along the Fairy Tale Road.
The book also gives some interesting perspectives about the origins of fairy tales that make sense, that herald interesting possibilities. The majority of these stories featured women as protagonists and antagonists, so it would make sense for the stories to be told and gathered by women. This book proposes that a group called The Sisterhood (of which the Ortizes are members) had and still have a close connection to the Grimm Brothers and the original tales.
It is also no secret that the original stories are much darker and (pun not intended) grimmer than we are used to. They contained rape, incest, cannibalism, destructive black magic, and homicide in its various forms. They were horror stories that slowly evolved into moralistic stories with potentially dark elements but ultimately happy ever afters. The Fairy Tale Code provides interesting theories about the real meanings behind the stories, why they were so dark, and what compelled the gatherers like the Brothers Grimm and France's Charles Perrault to change and edit them.
Again, whether it is necessarily true in the real world or not, the theories posed in this book are impressive and offer unique perspectives.
Any good mystery adventure makes the main mystery a personal struggle for the characters and The Fairy Tale Code is no exception. Both Anne and David bear personal angst that they hope this mystery will bring solutions towards. Anne was very close to her older sister, Rachel, who introduced her to the world of fairy tales. (They even called each other "Snow White"-Rachel and "Rose Red-"Anne after one of theirs, and my, favorite story.) Unfortunately, something happened that led to an estrangement and Rachel is hard to get in touch with. Plus Anne describes her sister in vague terms implying that she might have a serious mental disorder.
David meanwhile still grieves for his mother who died in a gruesome way when he was still a child. He also speaks about a sister who is missing. A common thread in fairy tales is a sibling looking for another one. Anne and David hope that maybe the solution to this mystery will lead to the answers to their own quests.
My favorite characters, The Ortiz Sisters, also have their own struggles with family and its meaning, even as they are involved in this mystery. They are part of The Sisterhood and operate under the behest of a shadowy figure called The Queen who doesn't mind that her subordinates use violence. Many of the sisters follow The Queen's orders without question. Another sister Lily, questions the orders and whether she is fit to be a sister in every sense of the word, both theirs and in The Sisterhood. She debates what sisterhood means if it conflicts with the personal individual thought.
With its adventurous suspenseful plot, fascinating characters, and strong themes of feminism, family, and the history behind the legend, The Fairy Tale Code isn't just a great book. It's one of my favorite books of 2022.
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