CRUEL BEAUTY
Author: Rosamund Hodge
Release Date: January 28, 2014
Pages: 352
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Graceling meets Beauty and the Beast in this sweeping fantasy about one girl's journey to fulfill her destiny and the monster who gets in her way-by stealing her heart.
Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.
Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.
With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.
But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle-a shifting maze of magical rooms-enthralls her.
As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.
Now on to the post!
You know this story, right? It’s Beauty and the
Beast, the Tale As Old As Time. For the sake of her father, a girl goes to
live with a monstrous beast at his mysterious house, where he asks her to marry
him every night . . . and only after she agrees, does she find that he’s a
beautiful prince.
It’s also Bluebeard. A
girl marries a strange, charming gentleman who takes her to his beautiful
mansion . . . where she discovers that her new husband is actually a monster
who keeps his murdered wives in a closet.
It’s also East of
the Sun, West of the Moon. For the sake of her family, a girl marries a
polar bear, and she goes to his strange and beautiful palace . . . where she
discovers that he is actually a prince under a curse, and to free him she has
to journey all the way to the palace of the trolls.
It’s also the myth of Cupid and Psyche. For
the sake of her kingdom, a princess is sacrificed to a “monster” . . . but
instead of being eaten, she’s taken to a beautiful palace, where her husband
visits her in the darkness every night. When she finally sees him, she
discovers he’s really Cupid, the god of love, and to be with him forever she
has to complete a series of impossible tasks, and journey all the way to the
Underworld.
And that’s not even getting into more obscure variations like The Singing, Springing Lark
or The Three Sisters
Who Married the Devil.
Once you start reading a fairy tale beyond the Standard Picture
Book Version (which is usually a Grimm/Perrault hybrid with the ickiest parts
removed), you find that every story is endlessly refracted in a million
variations. And when a story becomes so multitudinous, it takes on a life of
its own. It’s like a giant sea serpent moving silently beneath the water—you
might see only a few fins break the surface, but you know there’s something
vast and living underneath.
It’s those connections, that sense of secret logic underneath,
that drive me to write myth and fairy tale retellings.
Why did I write a Beauty and the Beast retelling, and why did I
combine it with Greek mythology? Because I realized that all these stories were
the same story. And once I had seen the connection between them, I couldn’t
look away. I felt like there was another story, a “real” story lurking beneath
all these variations. And I had to see if I could write it.
So I did.
Thanks Rosamund! I really loved this post! I had no idea there were so many different variations of the story!
Rosamund Hodge grew up as a homeschooler in Los Angeles, where
she spent her time reading everything she could lay hands on, but especially
fantasy and mythology. She got a BA in English from the University of Dallas
and an MSt in Medieval English from Oxford, and she now lives in Seattle with
seven toy cats and a plush Cthulhu. Visit her on the web at http://www.rosamundhodge.net/
Giveaway
Details:
1 ARC of CRUEL BEAUTY US Only
Here’s the Tour Schedule!
1/27/2014- Paranormal Book Club- Review
1/27/2014- Two Chicks on Books- Guest
Post
1/28/2014- Imaginary Reads- Review
1/29/2014- Magical Urban Fantasy Reads- Review
1/29/2014- Fiktshun- Guest Post
1/30/2014- Bewitched Bookworms- Review
1/31/2014- Some Like it Paranormal- Review
1/31/2014- Parajunkee- Interview
