Cruel Beauty

This wasn’t really a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, it was more like a Greek-myth version of Bluebeard. Because the whole idea of the Beast (in the Disney tale) is that despite his fearsome appearance, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. That isn’t really what happens here.

What I Liked:

1. The initial tension between who Shade was and who Ignifex was, and which one of them Nyx should trust.

2. The ever-changing magical house and the various artefacts in it, including Shade’s appearance changing at night and being able to speak. The quest to find the Hearts (and the Beast’s true name) was really well set up, and the Hearts themselves were vividly described, particularly the Heart of Water. Unfortunately it didn’t really lead anywhere, because the ‘Beast’/demon turned out to be a pawn of the Kindly Ones.

3. The world-inside-the-world and the Hermetic precepts.

4. I loved the hints of peasants and their religion being Christianity/Celtic paganism. That was one of the few pieces of worldbuilding I thought was authentic.

5. The sky/dome. I thought it was a bit hokey, but it was interesting in a sort of post-apocalyptic way.

6. The banter between Ignifex and Nyx.

7. The motif of ‘deals with the devil’, and the way these were twisted, including the reason for Arcadia’s imprisonment. I liked the prince being too full of hatred to be a worthy candidate, even though it was never really explained why.

What I Disliked:

1. The Shade/Ignifex dichotomy perplexed me. I got that they were ultimately two halves of the same person, but I didn’t understand why this was necessary, plot-wise. I was intrigued by the idea of Shade being Ignifex’s actual shadow and felt cheated that that was never explored. It could’ve made a good quasi-horror trope, although admittedly, a well-worn one.

But there’s a bait-and-switch: suddenly, when she falls in love with him (for no explicable reason other than that he is teh hawt and that he treats her with kindness and trusts her) he becomes a pawn to the Kindly Ones and all agency is taken away from him.

Why does insta-romantic-love have to be the solution to everything? Why can’t it be friendship? What is so bloody all-fired good about romantic love that everyone has to use it to glue EVERY single relationship together?

2. There were numerous dropped plot points. The Children of Typhon/shadow-devouring plot point was set up and then never really taken anywhere. I thought that would be the key to her defeating him, but it turned out to be a red herring, and was used as a generic torture device. Then I thought the Lar would help her defeat Ignifex, and that was dropped too. Her vision in the Heart of Earth is conveniently left unexplained until it’s too late for her to save him. Like other reviewers, I thought finding each of the heart rooms and applying the ‘fire is the death of water’ precepts would be the key to transforming the Gentle Lord back into the Prince, or maybe they’d need to do some kind of alchemical spell to spell out his true name or something. I don’t know what I thought would happen with the true-name thing, just that it was dropped and never really brought up again until the alt reality.

3. The Kindly Ones as puppeteers/plot device didn’t work for me either. If I compare this to Deltora Quest 1, there is a similar setup, in that the rulers of Deltora have grown too proud and complacent to wear the Belt and have allowed themselves to be [SPOILER] duped by their advisors, who are agents of the Shadow Lord.

But there, their involvement is set up from the outset. Here, the Kindly Ones are randomly mentioned towards the middle, and suddenly they just turn up in a dream sequence (and later towards the end of the plot). There’s no setup for them to be there. In DQ the poverty in Del is constantly emphasised: we’re shown a Lief who goes hungry and steals apples after sunset at great risk to his life, food being taken to the palace, a ‘beggar’ Barda who is notably worn down, dirty and mumbling, and a Del whose potteries have closed down and whose few remaining businesses are struggling to survive.

We also see a Lief whose parents are obviously loving, if overly cautious. In CB, on the other hand, the father’s total indifference towards Nyx is... understandable, but it’s overdone. Yes, I understand that parents like these exist, but was the father’s weird, quasi-incestuous relationship with the aunt really necessary? It took away from the fact that he made a deal with the demon for his wife. I mean... I get it, Nyx was never shown love in her life, both she and her sister were playing a part, and the Gentle Lord’s love showed her she was worth loving.

But the world and the other characters were... just kind of cardboard. Like a set piece. After reading Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy, where I could almost smell Buckkeep, I wanted some more depth to her relationship with her father and sister and even her maids, I wanted more actual human experience than we got, not just the simplistic ‘happy sister, hateful sister’ dynamic. There were some inroads made towards the relationship with her sister, but they were in the form of reminiscences rather than in the present day. There was a lot of talk about keeping the sister in the dark, but it was set up very simplistically.

And really, the Resurgans have been researching this demon for decades and they couldn’t come up with a better solution than a knife or true love’s kiss?

The alt reality worked well for me, but then that was completely undercut by the ending. It’s in full-on sappy romantic mode (‘I would be with him 5eva and that was all that mattered”), which just didn’t work for me. I liked the selfless ‘deal with no strings’ as a contrast to the usual deals, but the relationship between Nyx and the Gentle Lord never really convinced me enough. There was no depth, it was all very Edward-and-Bella.

What’s up with the phrase a ‘handful of kindness’ at the end? A sacrifice for eternity is not the same as a handful of kindness!

Summary: It was okay, but I wouldn’t read it again.

This book was gorgeously written and I found it absolutely captivating. Of course, I am a sucker for all things Beauty and the Beast so this retelling was definitely my sort of thing.

It has all my favorites - flawed main characters, thorough world building and a love story that wasn't instalove. My only nit was that all the characters had stupid names (Nyx, I'm talking to you!) but I can live with that!

Cruel/Wicked/Beautiful

Didn’t care for the family. Did a good job at making you side with one man over the other only to pull the rug out from under you. The ending had me spiraling to the finish just as they had fallen.

Overall I liked it but I think it could be much better if the main character was a little bit more complex, especially in the beginning. I was even halfway of stopping listening (audible) to it and then just continued because i dont like having a story unfinished.

Basically the main character can be reduced to a repetetive "Oh he is evil but also hot" when I think the overall story is great and even has a nice twist to it at the end; the main char just needs to be toned down.