“A brilliant achievement.” — Boston Herald   “Entertaining…profound….A novel for adults that unearths our buried fascination with the primal fears and truths fairy tales contain.” — Christian Science Monitor   Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author who re-imagined a darker, more dangerous Land of Oz in his New York Times bestselling series The Wicked Years, offers a brilliant reinvention of the timeless Snow White fairy tale: Mirror Mirror . Setting his story amid the cultural, political and artistic whirlwind of Renaissance Italy—and casting the notorious Lucrezia Borgia as the Evil Queen—Maguire and Mirror Mirror will enthrall a wide array of book lovers ranging from adult fans of Harry Potter to readers of the sophisticated stories of Angela Carter. Adult/High School--A dark and vivid retelling of Snow White transposed to the Italy of the Borgias. Lucrezia is the evil stepmother and five-year-old Bianca de Nevada grows into the role of Snow White. Vicente, a minor landlord beholden to Lucrezia and her brother/lover Cesare, unwillingly leaves his motherless daughter to go on a seemingly futile errand for Cesare. Journeying to Greece to seek out a branch of the holy Tree of Knowledge, Vicente languishes for years in the dungeon of the very monks who possess the relic. While her father is gone, Bianca develops into a lovely young woman, attracting Cesare's attention. Seeing this, Lucrezia orders her killed and sends a young hunter into the woods with the familiar instructions. Adding much historical flavor and returning to the edgy eroticism of the fairy tale, Maguire invests the journeys of the Borgias, Bianca, and Vicente with a compelling urgency. Readers will be intrigued by the new story and yet curious as to how the familiar elements are brought in. Sometimes seven, sometimes eight, the dwarves, slowly awakening to their possibilities, are droll and great fun to listen to. The language has an old-fashioned quality and the point of view shifts frequently, but teens who continue to the end will learn much of medieval Italy and a little of human nature, and have a new respect for the old tale. This is a great addition to the Maguire shelf. --Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Maguire writes for children and adults about witches and evil stepmothers, and his novel Wicked (1996) is now a Broadway musical. Wickedness is certainly the dynamic in this retelling of the Snow White fairy tale, set in early sixteenth-century Italy, where vice and corruption are commonplace for everyone from the pope to the brutal military conqueror Cesare Borgia. The Snow White character is an angelically beautiful child, Bianca. The stepmother-witch is Cesare's vain, demonic sister, Lucrezia, who is so jealous that she orders a hunter to murder Bianca in the woods. The child is saved by the seven dwarfs, though Lucrezia continues in relentless murderous pursuit with a poison apple. The telling is sometimes too convoluted, with constantly switching viewpoints. But, like a Renaissance comedy, the wild story effectively captures the transcendent and the vulgar, beauty and beast. At the center is the mirror, where some see only themselves, but a few see the reflection of much more and discover the truth. Hazel Rochman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Wildly inventive...Maguire refreshes his source material capably...Every bit as good as Wicked: wicked good, in fact.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A brilliant achievement.” - Boston Herald “To accomplish this metaphorical feat, Maguire pulls in everything from the biblical “tree of knowledge” to the conniving but oppressed Lucrezia Borgia, who serves nicely as the tale’s wicked queen, to eight (count ‘em) distinctly non-Disneyesque dwarfs with a knack for mirror making.” - Village Voice A lyrical work of stunning creative vision, Mirror Mirror is set in Renaissance Italy, where Gregory Maguire draws a connection between the poison apple in the original Snow White story and the Borgia family's well-known appetite for poisoning its foes. In Mirror Mirror Snow White is called Bianca de Nevada. She is born on a farm in Tuscany in 1495, and when she is seven, her father is ordered by the duplicitous Cesare Borgia to go on a quest to reclaim the relic of the original Tree of Knowledge, a branch bearing three living apples that are thousands of years old. Bianca is left in the care of her father's farm staff and the beautiful—and madly vain—Lucrecia Borgia, Cesare's sister. But Lucrecia becomes jealous of her lecherous brother's interest in the growing child and plots a dire fate for Bianca in the woods below the farm. There Bianca finds herself in the home of seven dwarves—the creators of the magic mirror—who await the return of their brother,