Balzer and Bray

“You’re just as foolish as the others. You think you are clever, strong, special. You think you’re going to win.”

Hodge, Rosamund (2014-01-28). Cruel Beauty

• Release Date: January 28th 2014

• Genre: Fantasy/Fairytale

• Pages : 342

• Publisher: Balzer & Bray

Cruel Beauty is a fantasy retelling of Beauty and The Best, where beauty is an angry and selfish (read: cruel) young woman named Nyx. Out of desperation Nyx’s father made a bargain that would result in Nyx being married off to the Gentle Lord, a powerful demon who has ruled over Nyx’s people for 900 years. Nyx mission isn’t just to marry the Gentle Lord, but she has been trained to take him down, but could there more inside this beast than darkness ?

 

Cruel Beauty is sold as a Beauty and the Beast retelling
but the story feels more like the tale of Bluebeard. A man whose young innocent wife discovers the benevolent Bluebeard keeps the bodies of his previous wives who disobeyed him. There is this sense of isolation and dread in the original tale that we see a bit of in Cruel Beauty. Nyx is also one of many of wives who have joined the Gentle Lord and, like in the original tale, he allows Nyx to roam the rooms of his magical house—expect for the locked ones. The Gentle Lord also keeps the dead bodies of his previous wives in one of said rooms, so I was really getting Bluebeard vibes

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