The Sleeper and the Spindle

In a castle lies a maiden, plunged into a magical sleep, a sleep that also afflicts the rest of the castle's population, and that of the surrounding village. In fact, the sleeping plague is growing, for all that no-one actually recalls why or how it began. Soon another kingdom is threatened and a young Queen comes to see what can be done. Many princes have died trying to reach the maiden, but the Queen has fought magic before and her faithful dwarves are themselves magical. Perhaps she can wake the Sleeper.

Fairy tale retellings are pretty much ten a penny these days. Between Once Upon a Time and the Frozen juggernaut it's easy to dismiss yet another revisionist offering as derivative. To do so really misses the point that Neil Gaiman has been doing this for decades, but it is certainly the case that it's harder to do anything new in the field. In The Sleeper and the Spindle, Gaiman eschews entirely the traditional prince (almost no-one is named in the book, a fact commented on in the text, but the only prince isn't even capitalised and is deliberately referenced in the terms of a traditional damsel) in favour of his heroic Queen.

Essentially a grown up Snow White, the Queen is a stalwartly pragmatic figure, whose strength lies in understanding the romance of the story without being caught up in it. Her 'true love's kiss' is functional and her own romance practical; she is the fairy tale as process. The real twist of the tale lies in its damsel, however, giving us a Sleeping Beauty as different as Tanith Lee's Snow White, leaving Maleficent's alt-Aurora for dust.

The book is lavishly illustrated by Chris Riddell, which pretty much guarantees it my vote, even if it does mean I actually look at the Queen as an adult Ada Goth.