ASH/HUNTRESS

Ash, by Malinda Lo, is a high fantasy retelling of the story of Cinderalla with a few notable differences. For starters, the fairy godmother is, in this tale, a hot male fairy named Sidhean, and instead of a Prince Charming, Ash falls in love with Kaisa, the king's Huntress. It's every bit the love story that the Disney version is, but even more than that, it's a story about experiencing paralyzing depression and emerging from grief and loss into life and love. Malinda Lo is one of the foremost proponents of LGBT diversity in young adult literature. She is particularly interested in the way that fantasy worldbuilding offers a chance to present LGBT representation in such a way that it's totally normalized. In Ash, no one mentions that characters are "gay" or "straight," because such descriptors are meaningless when there's no value judgment placed on gender identity or sexual preference.

Huntress is a companion novel to Ash. Set long before the adventrues of Ash, Kaisa, and Sidhean, Huntress tells the story of how the first king's Huntress came to be in the story of Kaede and Taisin. In the novel, nature is failing and the two 17-year-old girls are chosen by oracle to go to the city of hte Fairy Queen for Help. Lo describes Huntress as the "hero's quest, straight-up." Along the journey, the characters encounter great danger and several mishaps, and Kaede and Taisin begin to rely on each other and slowly, to fall in love. Huntress is more obviously inspired by elements of Chinese culture than Ash, but never in a way that calls attention to cultural difference or makes value judgments. Likewise, Kaede and Taisin's romance is star-crossed, but not because of their sexuality. They simply feel called to pursue different paths in life, and aren't sure where their love for each other fits into those paths.