“The Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (SFINCS, pronounced “sphinx”)a is a yearly competition to recognize, honor, and celebrate the talent and creativity present in the indie community. We are a sister competition to both SPFBO and SPSFC, and we highlight greatness in the novella format in all areas of speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc.).” – From the official SFINCS website.
Note: The following review contains only my personal thoughts as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole.
REVIEW
What big teeth you have!
In Daughters of the Blue Moon, author Millie Abecassis tackles the story of Little Red Riding Hood, employing key motifs associated with the fairytale while engaging with interpretations of the same. In this Sapphic fantasy retelling of the traditional story, Abecassis combines a tight focus on the protagonist’s empowerment with an exploration of the ways in which women are often subtly coerced into their own subjugation. Fans of New Adult retellings, werewolf stories, and witchy vibes will find a lot to enjoy here, and I recommend the novella to fans of Ava Reid who are looking for a similar feel in a smaller package.
In terms of its story, Daughters is focused mainly on the aftermath of Little Red Riding Hood. Protagonist Carmine is the granddaughter of a local village witch, a wife and hunting-partner to the husband who originally rescued her from 
the big bad wolf who disguised himself in her grandmother’s clothes, and is struggling under the weight of spousal (and gendered) expectations. While Carmine once loved her husband, she’s beginning to feel the wear and tear of their marriage. The couple’s efforts to conceive have met with failure, and while her husband appears patient, Carmine privately dreads the prospect of motherhood. One of Carmine’s greatest joys–hunting in the woods–is now also something her husband is pressuring her to retreat from. While Carmine’s husband isn’t obviously abusive in a typical sense, he exerts a great deal of subtle pressure on her to conform, citing her gender as the reason she is a “weaker” hunter than he is, despite proof to the contrary. As a hunter, Carmine is protected by an elaborate back tattoo inked into her skin by her late grandmother in order to protect her. Carmine depends on this tattoo to shield her from the wolves she battles, and so when her back is torn up during a wolf attack, both she and her husband worry for her ability to protect herself. After the attack, however, Carmine is visited by talking wolves in her dreams–wolves who suggest that Carmine’s tattoo did far more than protect her, and that she may share a deeper kinship with the wild than she ever believed. As her husband pressures her to have the tattoo fixed, Carmine begins to suspect he knows far more than he’s letting on.
Many of the set pieces and elements common to different retellings (and readings) of Red Riding Hood make an appearance in Daughters of the Blue Moon. Menstruation, coming-of-age, and (perhaps somewhat obviously) the symbolic relationship between womanhood and the moon, each play a role in Carmine’s story. Where Abecassis plays with the fairytale is through her characterization of the hunter and Red Riding Hood. As previously mentioned, the seeming heroics of Carmine’s hunter husband disguise a potentially darker motivation, while Carmine herself is anything but a retreating adolescent. The grandmother character is, here, a force to be reckoned with even beyond the grave, and Abecassis does a lot to contextualize how the supernatural (including witchcraft) is perceived and treated within Carmine’s village and surrounding communities. Despite its modest length (at 22k words it’s on the shorter side for a novella), Abecassis paints a solid picture of Carmine’s environment. For the most part, Abecassis’s reimagining of the story does a lot to add texture and detail, without overburdening the story with too rigid and detailed an explanation of the supernatural elements. Where the work does falter slightly in this is in its use of some of the more comical aspects of the Riding Hood story (a wolf disguising himself as Carmine’s grandmother, feigning illness, and coaxing her into bed while dressed in a nightgown and cap). In a work in which the motivations and approaches of the characters otherwise feel very down-to-earth or are played straight, the absurdity of the tactic is slightly jarring and unintentionally funny. If more had been done to lampshade the humour, or if Abecassis had leaned into the absurd creepiness more, it might have been more effective, but as is it feels disruptive to the careful tone the author constructs elsewhere.
Soon the land would become white and silent, and soon Carmine would roam it unbound, without spells stopping her from choosing her path.
That said, there are some beautifully horrific images, simply and elegantly delivered over of the course of the story: a corpse’s foot uncovered beneath a mound of snow, buried bones under a weeping willow, the elaborate yet constraining tattoo that resembles forks of splintered lightning. The opening pages are evocative and full of tension, creating a powerful hook for readers with their depiction of a series of animal deaths on a farm bordering the woodland. Apart from a few stumbles in tense, the writing is clear, concise, and effective. Where a less skilled writer might make the mistake of peppering the story with florid description, Abecassis holds back enough to let the more important images and lines stand out. Daughters is thus largely a very smooth and quick read. With its short length and tight focus, it’s a book I can easily foresee readers picking up and spending time with.
Character is a huge piece in Daughters of the Blue Moon and the reading experience is propelled chiefly by Carmine’s internal conflict and growth. As a story of empowerment, it bears resemblance to a lot of New Adult (and some Young Adult) stories in which the focus is on the differentiation of the main character from their family or mentor figures. That said, one of the aspects of Daughters that I found the most compelling was its very adult, nuanced depiction of a certain kind of coercive relationship in which one partner isn’t dramatically abusive, but in which there is nonetheless a kind of socially-informed inequality that dominates and determines interpersonal interactions. Abecassis’s treatment of this, through the relationship between Carmine and her husband, is well done, and I imagine will be relatable to many contemporary readers who’ve unfortunately found themselves in these kinds of relationships. An unfortunate side effect of the emphasis on Carmine’s marriage, however, iss that the burgeoning Sapphic romance between Carmine and another character is less developed. While there’s a satisfying tension to the conflicts between Carmine and her husband, and Carmine and the heteronormative and misogynistic society that surrounds her, there’s a comparative lack of tension or excitement when it come to exploring her romance. I couldn’t help but want the novella to last a little longer, in order for Abecassis to give both this element, as well as an exploration of Carmine’s developing self, more room to shine. As a protagonist, Carmine’s motivations and reasoning is always clear, but due to the constraints she’s been placed under all her life, it’s as though her personality isn’t fully developed. This, to me, felt intentional and realistic, but I would have liked to have spent more time with Carmine and her love interest to see how her true self was emerging.
Overall, Daughters is an effective, tightly-plotted story that should tickle the itch of Sapphic readers eager for a fairytale that doesn’t shirk when it comes to addressing adult themes. Abecassis is clearly a skilled writer, and I’m particularly eager to read something longer by the author.
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