Gilded

Gilded is a fantasy novel by Marissa Meyer, published in 2021 and the first of a duology that retells the story of Rumpelstiltskin.

Serilda is a miller's daughter who was cursed long ago by the god of lies, which makes her a gifted teller of stories that are fantastical, spellbinding and completely false. She tells them to the village children, and nobody takes them seriously until one of them draws the attention of the Erlking and his undead hunters. He carries her away to a grim country where ghouls and phantoms wander and hollow-eyed ravens follow her movements, and there he sets her an impossible task: spin straw into gold, or be executed for lying. In her desperation Serilda summons a mysterious boy who offers to help her, which he will do at a price. Love is not supposed to be part of the arrangement, and the castle turns out to hold more than one secret, including some that concern the king himself.

Meyer writes fairy-tale retellings in which the familiar bargain is examined from the inside, and this one is darker and colder than the story it comes from.