review

THE TINDER BOX – KATE ELLIOTT

By karen t. brissette

Posted on December 4, 2021

The Tinder Box by Kate Elliott
My rating: 4/5 cats
One Star

WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!

this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.

this is the SIXTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.

GR has deleted the pages for several of the stories i’ve read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. i have tried to restore the ones i could, but my to-do list is already a ball of nightmares, so that’s still a work-in-progress. however, because i don’t have a lot of time to waste, i’m not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case GR decides to scrap ’em again.

i am doing my best.
merry merry.

DECEMBER 4: THE TINDER BOX – KATE ELLIOTT

The king had grown somewhat stout from the soldier I had met thirty-three years ago. He had the expression of a man who will speak politely to your face and then lop off your head the instant you don’t answer questions whose answers he has no right to know. He looked me up and down with the measuring eye of a man who loves his pleasures, but his look held no tremor of recognition. How could it, when he had last seen me in the guise of an old hag? He was the sort of man who knew for certain that witches took to witchcraft only because they couldn’t interest a man like him.

this story is like a snuggie® wrapped around hans xtian andersen’s The Tinder Box; a fairytale i always forget about until i get to that detail about the guard dogs with the various-sized eyes, and it gives me glad-goosebumps. those doggies deserve their own show.

if you’re wondering why social progress, in our world, is slow, and justice is delayed, it’s probably because the immortal beings who are for whatever reason invested in our struggles can afford to take their time fomenting revolution through elaborate, multistage plots; a skull waiting “for the right heart to pass by” for years while we mortals live and suffer and die pawnishly. sure hope that right heart passes by soon, yeah?

still, it’s nice that they want to intervene and help us save ourselves, even when they get all corny about it.

Those who fight for justice will die or they will live. Fate is beyond my power. But I will prick their hearts until they either choke on their own blood or are forced to swim in the river of truth.

i’m being glib because i woke up in a MOOD, but i enjoyed the story and maybe YOU WILL, TOO!