The Sleeping Sickness is a short novella that is a cool, steampunk spin on Sleeping Beauty. It follows an amazing engineer/genius Malena as she creates mechanical crows and dragons, and then sets out to right a wrong she (was forcefully) committed against her friend Briar.

I really liked this and how some of the key elements of Sleeping Beauty were there but also morphed into a super cool steampunk existence. I also liked how Malena, who was obviously based on Maleficient, wasn’t the evil queen she’s always portrayed as being but was instead just a clever woman who was very focused on her work, and found it a bit too easy to distance herself from the world around her.

This was a nice little interlude from a very long book I was reading, and it gave me a pleasant read, and because it was short, the instant high that finishing a book, any book, can bring you. I definitely recommend this to anyone looking for something nice and adventurous to read for a bit of a break, as well as anyone who loves a unique fairytale retelling.