A Spindle Splintered

Zinnia Gray knows how her story ends. A childhood illness called Generalized Roseville Malady has never let anyone live past twenty-two, and Zinnia is turning twenty-one. Her best friend Charm throws her one last Sleeping Beauty party, spindle included. When Zinnia pricks her finger on it, she is pulled straight into the fairy tale she has been obsessed with since she was a girl.

She lands in the tower of Princess Primrose, a hundred years from waking and promised to a marriage she never chose. It turns out the fairy who cursed her meant to protect her. Working that out means Zinnia has to decide whether she's this story's next casualty or its author. She pulls in other Sleeping Beauties, cursed the same way in worlds of their own, to help free Primrose.

A Spindle Splintered is the first of Harrow's Fractured Fables novellas, a quick, sharp tongued retelling that puts a present day voice inside fairy tale logic and lets her argue back. It runs fast and funny even with a death sentence hanging over its narrator, and it was named a 2022 Hugo Award finalist.