A lush and immersive queer “Sleeping Beauty” retelling about escapism, grief, and dreaming of a better world, as imagined by YouTube star Cindy Pham 100 years have passed since the last heir of Gyldan fell into eternal slumber and doomed the once-mighty kingdom into poverty and invasion. At least, that’s what the fairy tales claim.; Corin is a jaded thief who doesn’t believe in fables, even when she searches Gyldan’s underground tunnels to find her younger sister, Elly, who ran away to find the sleeping princess in hopes of a better life. Corin''s conviction is challenged when she discovers the ruins of the ancient castle, maintained by beings from the kingdom''s golden age, who protect a hidden portal into princess Amelia''s subconscious. Following Elly’s voice, Corin jumps in the portal and seals the entry behind her. Inside the lush world of Amelia''s dreams, the sisters reunite for a new adventure as they meet Briar Rose, Amelia’s whimsical alter ego, and Malicine, a sharp-tongued demon with a gift for magic. But as they explore ice castles, sunflower mazes, and star-filled oceans, Corin suspects Briar Rose is hiding darker secrets behind her "perfect" paradise – and that there are some things their subconscious can’t bury forever.

Autorentext

Cindy Pham is a queer Vietnamese-American author of fantasy books. Based in New York City, she works as a full-time designer while moonlighting as a fiction writer and content creator. Her YouTube channel, Read With Cindy, has amassed over half a million subscribers and focuses on books, movie reactions, and candid commentary. The Secret World of Briar Rose is her debut novel.

Leseprobe
**Author’s note:
*This story is inspired by my experience with depression and suicidal ideation. If you find the subject matter to be difficult to read, please take care of yourself first.***
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Chapter 1

The last words Elly said before she disappeared were “I hate you.”
To Corin, the sentiment was nothing new. Saying “I hate you” was a universal language between sisters, and their tongues spoke it fluently.
Elly yelled it whenever Corin stomped over her chalk drawings and wiped them off the concrete. Corin hissed it whenever Elly hummed songs in the middle of her sleep and woke them up. They went to bed angry yet huddled for warmth every night. After the warplanes destroyed their homes and soldiers seized their family’s belongings, the only thing they had left was each other.
But this time was different.
This time, when Elly said “I hate you,” Corin knew she meant it.
Her sister had vanished as swiftly as any other resident come sunrise. Anyone living within the dilapidated buildings or rubble-­filled streets of Gyldan knew their home wasn’t forever. There would be a few years of normalcy and routine, if their factions allowed it, before the rumbling sound of bulldozers came to tear down the walls. A century-­long turf war between rivaling countries­ meant constant itinerance: new military, new flags, but never any warnings for the families who lived in Gyldan. Houses were simply strategic locations to be secured, and people like Corin and Elly were just collateral damage, about as insignificant as roaches that were crushed to death if they didn’t move out of the way.
As Corin wandered through the city center in search of Elly, she could hardly imagine these same streets bustling with trade and people a century ago. Her grandparents had risked their lives seeking refuge in the prosperous kingdom surrounded by forests, but those dreams were quickly dashed when the royal family abandoned its people, leaving an ungoverned country to descend into chaos. Warring groups divided into territories, and with soldiers patrolling the borders, Corin knew Elly couldn’t have left their faction­.
She pasted posters with her sister’s likeness around soup kitchens, town squares, even shops that had closed their shutters, like the burning bakery she had looted for bread after the last round of warplanes came. Her stomach rumbled with hunger by the time she circled back to the marketplace, a deserted area with ramshackle storefronts and stragglers sorting through trash. She approached a few of them to ask if they had seen the girl on her poster, but their eyes glazed over the image, or they muttered a non­committal response, or they cursed her out, which always resulted in her cursing them back.
Mostly, though, she was ignored, like another body rotting on the street.
Her appearance probably didn’t help. Hunger had whittled her limbs to bones and hollowed her cheeks. Swaths of crow-­black hair stuck to fresh bruises across her face. Tattered pants and ripped sleeves revealed grime and mud, the stains blending with her dark skin and old scabs. At eighteen years old, she already looked dead.
She nailed her last poster onto a wooden pole and took a step back, examining her work. She had recreated Elly’s face in charcoal with all the details she remembered. Every freckle on her dark skin, every birthmark on her long limbs. Her short, choppy hair, which always curled behind her ears. She had a small, rounded nose, wide cheekbones, and two large pools of eyes the color of summer soil after it rained. While Corin inherited their father’s broad shoulders and strong nose, Elly carried their mother’s features, soft and feminine like a black-­eyed daisy.
The longer Corin stared, the more she hated the drawing. The sketches were too crude and badly smudged. They looked like Elly but couldn’t capture her. They didn’t show what it felt like to hold her hand, to feel the stickiness of her palms from all the times she broke dandelion stems and marveled at their white milk. They didn’t show the light in her eyes whenever she heard a new story, the cuts on her fingers from plucking weeds in the cracks of sidewalks, the dirt under her nails from digging into soil and shouting that there was another world underneath that they couldn’t see.
“She’s still asleep down there,” Elly would insist in rushed breaths, “the princess from long ago—­”
Corin shook her head, dispelling her sister’s foolish enthusiasm for fairy tales. Even at the age of twelve, Elly still latched onto bedtime stories she’d heard as a child when they had lived with other artisans. Corin thought leaving the commune last year would, at least, let Elly outgrow childish interests and forget their friends. In the end, it was only Corin who wanted to forget them.
Before she dwelled longer, the sound of footsteps approaching made her reach for her belt. She turned to flash a dagger at the stranger’s throat, then pulled back as the elderly woman before her gasped.
“I’m sorry,” the stranger stammered, her voice frail and light. “I wanted to see your poster.”
Deep wrinkles etched the woman’s face like a crumpled plant. She wore a faded shawl that thinned above her wrists, showing a wedding ring that glinted from her finger. Corin handed her the crinkled paper and watched the woman squint at the drawing of Elly. Her lashes nearly brushed against the charcoal as her face pressed closer to the parchment. White clouds that surrounded her pupils shifted, her eyes straining to scan every detail.
“The shading on the girl’s face is excellent,” the woman murmured. “You’re very talented.”
Corin counted her breaths to restrain herself from cursing at the stranger. She felt foolish for hoping Elly would be recognized and angrier that the woman would waste her time by prattling compliments. She was not here to show off her technical skills in some pitiful act of panhandling. But why would anyone care? Even if peopl…