Book Review | Cruel Beauty | Rosamund Hodge

Title: Cruel Beauty
Author: Rosamund Hodge (web | twitter)
Series: Cruel Beauty Universe #1
Genre: Fantasy YA, Fairy Tale Retelling
Amazon | Goodreads | B&N
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Release date: January 28, 2014
Source: Borrowed ARC from Alyssa

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.

Friends, whenever I hear the words “fairy tale retelling,” I’m pretty much going to drop everything and run towards it, hands out, shouting, heart beating a million miles a minute. I love them. I know that fairy tale retellings are the new fad in YA literature and so eventually they’ll fade out a little bit, but for now, I’m just going to enjoy them. CRUEL BEAUTY by Rosamund Hodge is an impressive debut retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story that melds mythology and magic. I’ve heard some people didn’t love it, or had some issues with the world, but I thought it was pretty magical.

CRUEL BEAUTY takes place in Arcadia, a world that is vaguely Greco-Roman in inspiration, as if the two ancient cultures blended instead of one overtaking the other. Nyx lives with her father–a kind of cold man who grieves still for his dead wife, the mother of Nyx and her sister, Astraia. Arcadia is ruled by the Prince of Demons, Ignifex, who makes bargains with mortals that are never what they seem, and often have unintentional victims. Before the death of Nyx’s mother, her father made just such a bargain with Ignifex, and while the outcome–for his wife to bear children–was exactly as expected in one way, it also lead to his wife’s death. As part of the payment for this bargain, Nyx was promised to Ignifex upon her sixteenth birthday. CRUEL BEAUTY begins with Nyx’s marriage to an idol representing Ignifex and being taken to his castle. Once there, Nyx is determined to undo whatever magic Ignifex uses to rule over Arcadia with such power and fear, but her growing closeness to him and another being, Shade, complicate matters.

Since so much of CRUEL BEAUTY is about the relationship between Nyx and Ignifex and Nyx and Shade, I’ll start there. Also, this was probably my favorite aspect of the books. Ignifex is charming and dangerous and bold. Shade, a shadow who looks exactly like Ignifex, is his opposite: gentle, caring, and sensitive. Nyx feels immediately drawn to him, and they develop a strong connection. Ignifex though…*fans self* He’s so confident and sexy and mysterious, and Nyx feels inexplicably drawn to him as well, despite basically hating him. These two men wreak havoc on Nyx’s emotions, not to mention her BIG PLANS (more on those in a sec). As CRUEL BEAUTY progresses and Nyx learns more and more about both of them, her feelings become increasingly complicated. I don’t necessarily have issues  with triangles, but if I did, I don’t think I would’ve minded these relationships. They’re both so different and always changing and surprising, some in good ways and some not. I felt ACTUAL, REAL butterflies while reading some of the more intense emotional scenes. BUTTERFLIES. Rosamund Hodge does a great job with the romance in CRUEL BEAUTY.

The center point of all of this is, of course, Nyx. I don’t mean to seem like I’m giving her short shrift because I talked about the romance first, but she is such a complex anti-princess character. Most female leads in fairy tales–and so in their retellings–are essentially good. Nyx is not. She feels rage and anger about being forced to marry Ignifex; she feels bitter towards and jealous of her much-beloved and coddled twin sister, Astraia. The truth is, she has much in common with Ignifex’s darker side, and I LOVED THIS. I loved so much that she had feelings that seemed so much more genuine than the way fairy tale princesses usually react to injustice in their own lives. She’s smart and enterprising and determined, and she feels things pretty strongly. I really, REALLY loved her.

Now, to those BIG PLANS. The world Rosamund Hodge built here not only takes liberties with Ancient Greek and Roman gods, mythology, and culture, but it also features some interesting magical science called the hermetic arts that Nyx has been studying her whole life in the hopes that she can use them to once and for all defeat Ignifex and free Arcadia from his grasp. Nyx’s determination to see her goal through to the end encounters some roadblocks as she learns more and more about Ignifex and his castle. And, of course, as she tries to make sense of her feelings. There’s an excellent twist with this part of the story that I also enjoyed. It turns lots of things on their heads.

What makes CRUEL BEAUTY so enchanting, though, is not just the characters but the writing. It’s all very, very lovely. Occasionally, the world is a little confusing and there are times when there’s a lot to process, but the language sets the perfect tone for this story. Props to Rosamund Hodge, y’all!

This review is getting long, so I’m going to wrap it up now. But I can’t tell you enough how much I was utterly enthralled by CRUEL BEAUTY. It made me feel actual, real life feelings. I cried, I swooned, I raged. I flat-out LOVED Ignifex, and I loved the complicated awesomeness of Nyx. I’m absolutely intrigued about the other books Rosamund Hodge is going to write in this world because CRUEL BEAUTY was, for me, frankly, excellent.

Check out some other reviews of Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge!

Nikki @ There Were Books Involved…: “I’ve never felt so completely torn about a book before.”

April @ Good Books and Good Wine: “This book you guys, I just want to pass it out to people on the street. I’m about to spread the gospel of Cruel Beauty because I don’t even know what to do with myself or my life after finishing. I am all bereft at having zero pages left.”