Deerskin
- 309
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Deerskin” is a dark, lyrically written fairy-tale novel about trauma and the slow work of healing. Robin McKinley retells Perrault’s “Donkeyskin” through Princess Lissar, a neglected only child whose dying mother extracts a strange promise from the king. Some readers are carried along even by its digressions; others find the darkness of the source tale hard to warm to. It suits readers who want a fairy tale that takes pain seriously.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Deerskin is a dark fantasy novel by Robin McKinley, first published in 1993. It is based on an old French fairy tale by Charles Perrault called Peau d'âne. It was nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 59 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 29% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Fantasy average of 8.0. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 59 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is Deerskin?
It has 309 pages — shorter than 93% of the ranked books in Fantasy.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Fantasy — and a score of 8.0, the closest to this book.
