Snow, Glass, Apples: Neil Gaiman. Illustrations by Colleen Doran

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Didn't See That Coming: Almost literally. For some unexplained reason, despite being able to see future events in dreams and mirrors, the queen never foresaw Snow White before meeting her. Guile Heroine: The queen isn't physically strong. She has to use her wits to poison Snow when the heartless girl starts preying on those in the forest.

So, as you know, Snow White (in the Disney film) sang with the birds and animals of the forest and gaily danced and worked with the seven dwarfs. Traumatized by an evil stepmother Queen. Nope, not this time. In this version, Snow, Glass, Apples, narrated by the not-so-evil stepmothet, Snow is beautiful, but the qualities that made her pure and innocent in Disney are the very keys to her evil, and in it she terrorizes the land, and even preys on her own father—she’s horrific, and in Doran’s capable hands, deliciously so. This retelling of Snow White starts off beautifully with the widowed king falling in love with the future stepmother of Snow White at the opening. This is not a graphic novel you can hand to your children...as it depicts explicit coupling scenes, albeit tastefully created illustrating love and lust. I foremost was enamored with the visually stunning images, which some of them held secrets to discover upon second glance while all of them were bright and enchanting. The prince and the princess have the queen imprisoned throughout the autumn, turning the people against her by vilifying her with lies that would morph into a fairy tale with a "happy ending." I imagine his loins, now, as he rode, a knot of frustration at the base of his manhood. I imagine his pale lips pressed so tightly together. Then I imagine his little troupe riding through the forest, finally coming upon the glass-and-crystal cairn of my stepdaughter. So pale. So cold. Naked, beneath the glass, and little more than a girl, and dead. They call me wise, but I am far from wise, for all that I foresaw fragments of it, frozen moments caught in pools of water or in the cold glass of my mirror. If I were wise I would not have tried to change what I saw. If I were wise I would have killed myself before ever I encountered her, before ever I caught him.I tried, but he had lost whatever force it was that had made him virile; and, some short while later, I left the Prince’s room, his curses and tears still resounding in my ears.

They say I was fooled; that it was not her heart. That it was the heart of an animal — a stag, perhaps, or a boar. They say that, and they are wrong. I did not go with them. They took her in the day, while she slept, and was at her weakest. They took her to the heart of the forest, and there they opened her blouse, and they cut out her heart, and they left her dead, in a gully, for the forest to swallow.

Blood Magic: The queen uses some of her own blood as an ingredient in a spell to create the poisoned apples that will tempt Snow White. Face Death with Dignity: In the final moments of her life while being roasted alive in a giant oven, the queen decides not to scream and give her tormentors the satisfaction of hearing her in agony as she dies. Rags to Riches: The queen was once a simple peasant lass who the king fell in love with after taking the best of what she had.