Then he heard the horrible screaming once more, and felt a burst of air as the raven again shot skywards.
Solid 3 Stars
The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings in my honest opinion will be more interesting to people who have a genuine interest in history as opposed to people who have an interest in ghost stories. I say this because I believe to truly appreciate this ghost story you have to realize this is more a translation with just a small amount of added flair than it is a retelling. I think if this was a true retelling or an inspired by version then I could see more ghost story lovers being drawn to this, as ultimately I think they would be disappointed with this particular version. I say this as going off of the synopsis focusing very heavily on it being a retelling of a medieval ghost story, and less on it being a newly translated piece of work.
The story itself is interesting and moves extremely quickly, and I have to say the introduction by Jones honestly built it up more than it actually was, but then again the history nerd in me was more than likely just really loving learning the origins of this tale. For what happens to Snowball I can completely understand why during it’s time this was considered scary. For me this wasn’t exactly scary but more weird and strange. I could feel the weirdness of the tale more than the scary or creepy and I think the quick abrupt changes, the bluntness and the extremely fast pace is what takes away from the scare factor. I felt I spent more time being bewildered by the cycle of events that where transpiring for Snowball, because he does go through some stuff, I mean he tried to fist fight a raven, and if that doesn’t intrigue you enough to see what else Snowball goes through then I don’t know what to say.
I’m not going to go into to much detail because this story is extremely short and doing so would just give away the whole tale, but I can say I appreciate being able to read this bit of history and have a peek into what ghost stories where like during the 15th century, so if that sounds interesting to you then pick this up, its worth the discovery!
Intotheheartwyld 