Book: A School for Fairy Tales (Regal Academy 1) by Luana Vergari
Release Date: January 16th 2018
Tags: TV Show, Cartoon, Fairy Tales, Retellings
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this review copy in exchange for an honest review.
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Synopsis
Everyone knows the great fairy tale heroes, but you may not be familiar with their most life-changing adventures of all-they got old! To pass their stories onto future generations, they joined together and built a school—Regal Academy! Will this latest generation of fairy tale heroes ride the coattails of their famous grandparents? Or do they have a whole new adventure in store?
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Review
Something a little different on here for a change. A comic from a cartoon. Many, many years ago I watched Winx Club. While that is still going strong I have stepped away from that. But I saw Regal Academy fly by on Nickelodeon once and knew instantly this was by the same creators as Winx Club. I did not have a chance to really follow the cartoon but when I saw the comic on Netgalley I knew I had to give it a go.
Regal Academy is a school for fairytale characters and currently the generation of grandchildren from fairytale characters are attending the academy. Some of the well known fairytale characters work at the academy. It is certainly an interesting set up where our characters all clearly have their own personalities and don’t seem to be carbon copies of their grandparents. There are also some lesser known fairy tales like Wolf and the seven billy goats which I could appreciate.
However this comic banks on the readers having watched the show I feel. The comic is separated into 4 shorter stories and there is no overarching plot besides it being the same characters and at Regal Academy. While the setting is interesting there is just too little to grab at the reader to want to pick up the next volume or to even feel like wanting to watch the show. There is not enough deepening of characters and the jumps between the stories and the magic use were too big. There are things touched upon but not continued on that make me wonder if these are just small summaries of episodes of the tv show.
The art itself is solid and colorful. Very eye catching.
A Dance With Books 
Probably won’t be picking this up since I’m unaware of the show, BUT I LOOOVED Winx Club, and read the W.I.T.C.H. comics–are you familiar with that? ❤
– Aimee @ Aimee, Always
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Yes! I subscribed to Witch for a while but they stopped publishing them here in the Netherlands so think I missed a lot. ._.
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This looks really girly and as it’s been said reminds my of Winx Club too 😉
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Yes, it has that distinctive style. 🙂
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Pink! Hahaha. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. 😀
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Haha so not your thing. 😉
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I appreciate the risk you took trying to jump back into some childhood memories, Annemeike! Sometimes, that’s an important thing to do. It’s a shame that this graphic novel didn’t capture you, though. But, you’re not the intended audience, right? Right. 😉
Do you read many graphic novels from NetGalley? What platform do you use to read them?
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It really is! True, true. Which is why I still rated it 3 stars. 😉
No not that many. A lot of the read nows aren’t my thing and I don’t get approved for a lot of them. If I do read them though I read them on the computer in Adobe Digital Editions.
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I am with you on the Read Now’s not being my thing either when it comes to graphic novels. I always wonder how they decide what gets to become a Read Now vs. not… But I do try to read at least one graphic novel a month. I think it’s a good chance of pace.
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I honestly tried to get into the cartoon but it was really difficult. I really like Rose Cinderella’s character in concept, but the biggest turn off for me is her ditziness. Maybe her personality appeals to children and I’m just the wrong demographic.
When you look at the show from its surrounding circumstances, it is really hard to appreciate it for what it is. It is clearly hopping from the Ever After High bandwagon. I’m going out on a limb here and saying that Rose is just an extreme version of Stella taken to unhealthy levels. Rose’s English voice actor is Jessica Paquet and it doesn’t help that she is the same actress who voices Stella from World of Winx (another exuberant fashion-crazed blonde).
All the characters have magic wands based on something from their fairytales. Obviously, Rose has pumpkin magic and the wand and concept basically looks like a Mythix wand and a MagicPop (from PopPixie) combined. Plus, the whole concept is about fairy tales and the concept is eerily similar to the Legendarium.
I can’t help but think that Rainbow is just recycling character designs too. Astoria looks like she is a concept art version of Flora (pink hair and similar plant powers too) and Vicky is just another Diaspro (hair, colour scheme and antagonistic role).
As for redeeming characteristics, well, the romance for Rose isn’t dumped on the audience from the first episode like Bloom’s and her love interest Hawk does have more personality than Sky.
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Yeah her ditziness was present in the comic as well. I had secretly hoped that it might be better in the show but I guess not. I never really watched Ever After so I can’t really make the comparison, but I do agree when taking a closer look at a lot of Rainow’s stuff these days feels recycled. I honestly haven’t bothered with World of Winx.
The two guys do seem to have more appeal than Sky and Brandon at first glance, even to me. 🙂
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