Sleep Like Death by Kalynn Bayron: Review by Colleen Mondor
Sleep Like Death, Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury 978-1-547-60976-5, $19.99, 368pp, hc) June 2024.
As she previously did with Cinderella, author Kalynn Bayron turned another classic on its head this year with Sleep Like Death, her smart and scary reimagining of Snow White. There’s a temptation when an author revisits a famous tale to assume they will simply modernize or dress it up a little, all of which can be fun and very successful. (Look no further than The Lion King or West Side Story for wildly popular retakes on Shakespeare.) But that is not Bayron’s style; she considered the long term consequences of happily ever after in Cinderella is Dead, and with Sleep Like Death she takes a hard look at storytelling itself. While there is plenty of action, some sorrow, and a dose of romance, this fairy tale strives for much more and delivers soundly by bringing the drama and the heart to a story we think we know all too well.
Almost 17-year-old Eve is a princess who has been training her whole life to defeat the Knight, a sorcerer who has made life a living hell for her mother’s kingdom. The Knight grants wishes, makes promises and then, once the details are revealed, wreaks havoc and pain upon anyone who signs his contracts. Eve’s own family has long suffered from the Knight’s nefarious deal-making, with her other mother, Queen Sanaa, reduced to life as a singing bird. The obvious answer here is that no one should take the Knight up on his offers but, well, as an encounter with a local landowner shows early on, it’s easy to understand how folks continue to think that things will be different for them. (Any reader will understand these days how folks could fall for too-good-to-be-true promises.) After uncovering some hard truths, Eve decides she has had enough and sets off to end the Knight once and for all. That things do not go as she planned should not be a surprise, it’s what happens next (and next) that will keep readers riveted.
Some familiar Snow White elements are here: a mirror (or ‘‘seeing stone’’), a Huntress, a safe cottage in the woods and, eventually, an apple. But very nearly everything else about Sleep Like Death is the author using what we expect and giving us something else. Most importantly, Eve’s family loves her, and both Queen Sanaa and Queen Regina are much beloved by their subjects. The Knight is eventually revealed to be another fairy tale villain who embodies his evil self in a way that elevates the story way past any level Snow White ever reached. (The reader should be prepared for some grievous losses in this novel; prices are paid, and they are most high.) But it’s the final spin, after the big battle, after mysteries are solved and truths uncovered, where Bayron plays her biggest storytelling tricks and Eve gets to challenge all the things we thought we knew about the story going in. This is Bayron, and Eve, at their shrewdest, and it is simply divine. I knew I was in for a great read with Sleep Like Death, because Bayron simply never disappoints. But this time, yet again, she impressed me even more. Who is killing it in young adult literature these days? Kalynn Bayron for sure; she is an author who must not be missed.
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This review and more like it in the November 2024 issue of Locus.
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