Cruel Beauty
By Rosamund Hodge Book Review by Miranda Fraser ISBN: 978-0-06-222473-6 Once again, I feel like I had reviewed this novel before... but I can find no trace of it. So I must have just blabbed about it to everyone I personally know. I KNOW for a fact that I got my (future) Mother-In-Law to read it the first time I read it, so I am very persuasive and I hope I can convince someone else to go pick up a copy of this novel! As you know from this series of book reviews I've been doing that I adamantly love the story of Beauty and the Beast. It is my favorite fairy tale of all time. THIS ONE is literally one of the BEST versions of it I have ever come across. Hodge incorporates wonderful elements of Greek mythology to write a nail biting version of a classic fairy tale. To begin with, Beauty and the Beast is traditionally a French fairy tale, but this version takes place in a land called Arcadia which is in Greece. Knowing that, it is not surprising that Hodge incorporated Greek mythology into her story. In fact famous names like Persephone, Pandora, and Zeus are specifically named throughout the novel. And if you're anything like me and LOVE Greek Mythology then you will find yourself drawn into this novel so quickly! In this novel Nyx, our Beauty, is a twin, so the author also incorporated the element of Beauty having at least one sibling. But unlike the other novels, this is a very different type of sibling relationships, in other stories our beauty is kind and perfect and her sister is selfish and cruel, but in this version our beauty is, the less-loved of the two daughters, mostly because she does not look like her (dead) mother, and the other sister has always been babied and adored. Our Beauty actually has a jealousy for the difference in their relationships with their father, so much so that she worries that she hates her more than she loves her sister. In this novel her father, Leonidas Triskelion, is the leader of the Resurgandi which is a Hermeticism group specifically focused on taking down the Gentle Lord. Aka the Lord of Tricks and controller of demons. He made a deal with this demon, yes, the one whom he is sworn to destroy, that he would give him one of his daughters as a wife on their seventeenth birthday in exchange for allowing him and his wife to have children. Of course we all know that deals with demons never go as planned and while she had the two girls he was promised she was unable to carry the babies with good health and died shortly after having them. He spent the next seventeen years training Nyx to learn all the ways of the Resurgandi so that she may go to him and destroy him and his home from the inside out. Essentially, he was sacrificing his daughter, for no one knew for sure if this would work. Now, the Gentle Lord, I'm sure you've guessed, is our story's Beast. I think one of the things I loved so much about this take on the story is that there aren't two acts in between when the story starts and they actually meet. So the whole novel is their Beauty and the Beast story, and what a unique one to boot. One where the father purposely bargains her away, she is sent there to destroy her husband, and he is not just any monster but a demon lord. It's so good and so exciting! Now Ignifex, for that is what he is called, is described as a 'sweet faced calamity', ink black hair, high cheek bones, and crimson red eyes with cat slit pupils. He has a shadow that looks almost exactly like him, but less harsh features in comparison as well as ridiculously blue eyes. He is called Shade and is sworn to do his master's bidding. Unlike in other stories this 'beast' has had several wives, all of whom he says died rather early into the marriage but he hopes Nyx will be different. She is defiant and fights him at every turn, but he does not hurt her or attack her, in fact, he likes that she is not a scared puppet. I suppose it is important to mention why the Gentle Lord is so hated by all. He is considered to be a liar because all the deals he does end terribly for those who make them. Arcadia has been sundered from the rest of the world and so they only know their small land for the last 900 years. And when I say that they were sundered I mean, literally you cannot travel past a certain point without immediate death and there is no blue sky, only a parchment dome. They believe the Gentle Lord killed the last prince and now rules his castle. And demons attack humans and either kill them or drive them mad, and since he is believed to control all demons, he must be sending them despite the people's tithes to him. So now that you know why he's so hated let's discuss what the Resurgandi believes Nyx can do to end his reign. The Resurgandi reminds me a lot of alchemy and the importance they place on balance with the elements. They believe that in the Gentle Lords home there are four hearts: air, fire, water, and Earth. And if she is careful and able to do a hermetic sigil over each one it would in theory collapse his home and kill him. But the hearts will be disguised and she will need to find them all first to do this. In the meantime, she discovers many things about the house and her husband. Here's where I want to discuss classic elements of Beauty and the Beast and how they are fitted into this novel. Instead of a nightly proposal Nyx is given the opportunity to guess his real name and if she gets it right, he is free of his masters (oh yeah, he's not the big bad boss everyone thought he was!) and if she guesses wrong she dies. Needless to say she refuses to guess his name. Shade comes alive at night and is able to separate from Ignifex and roam the house. He becomes an ally of Nyx and in this sense becomes the 'dream' version of the Beast from the original novel. In her search for the hearts she finds a room with a mirror that is a door she cannot unlock. But she discovers that she is able to see her family through this door and so spends many days checking on her sister. There is a library where she does as much research as she can but most of the books have been censured by The Gentle Lords rulers and so pages are burned through. And when the time comes that he allows her to go home to see her family, he gives her his ring so that she can use his powers to go from place to place. This is also a classic element of the original novel as he gives her a ring she need only spin to return to his home. I really enjoyed the way the classic elements were present in this version. Equally important to why I adore this novel is not so much the way she incorporated the elements, but rather how she developed the characters. For once Beauty is not a selfless person. She is in an inner battle of wanting to be loved and have what she wants for once in her life, and being a dutiful person and fulfilling what everyone else wants of her. Ignifex tells her at the very beginning that he likes a wife with malice in her heart. They started as enemies, she hated everything about him, was repulsed by the very thought of him, but slowly became attracted to him in every way. The more she learned of him the more she loved him. And in return he did as well, he only took wives because he was told to but with Nyx there is more to her and her presence. He tells her, "You lie to me, but not to yourself. That's why I love you". He sees the darkness inside Nyx, the hatred she has accumulated for her unfair life, he sees that just like everyone else she wants happiness but she does not think she deserves it. He loves that she is complex and deep and completely human. And I adore that relationship. The way they fell for the other, the way he protects her and things start to go wrong and they begin desperately to seek out the answer. But their love is also very complex, "Then he pulled me into his arms. 'I still might kill you', I told him, much later. He traced a finger along my skin. 'Who wouldn't?'" (237). I honestly feel that their active cat and mouse, the mysteries she slowly unravels, the betrayals and the myths that are woven so intricately together make this novel so wonderful. Finally, I said that I had read this novel before, and I had, but I have to say I loved it even more the second time through. I think I appreciated it more as well. The first time through I enjoyed it, but I complained bitterly about the ending feeling rushed, and it does, but the second time I read it, I think it made more sense to me and it upset me less. So brace yourselves when you get to the ending, because once you actually unravel the cause of the curse and the cost of undoing it you're going to sit there going, "WHAT?!" for a few minutes. It's alright, the ending is still happy, I promise. I loved this so much because I felt so much for the characters as the story progresses. I found myself falling for this demon lord, myself and still wish there was a sequel to this novel. The next best thing however is that Rosamund Hodge wrote a novel called "Crimson Bound" which is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood and I look forward to reading that when my Beauty and the Beast Book Review Series is over. Read on my book worms and as always links to the author's pages are listen below.
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