Cruel Beauty

By Rosamund Hodge

ISBN: 9780062224735
Publisher: Balzar + Bray
Publication Date: January 28th 2014
Number of Pages: 352
Source: Local Library

Goodreads Summary: 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.

My Rating:  

By now you can probably tell that I really enjoy fairy tale re-tellings.... I just can't help myself! This one takes a twist on the story of Beauty & the Beast. 

Nyx is our beauty in this story and her father made a deal with the Gentle Lord (a demon) to marry her off to him in exchange for the birth of her and her twin sister, Astraia. Her father did this to make his wife happy, as she had been unable to conceive. However, the deal just specified the birth of a child (or children in this case) but didn't guarantee the life of the mother - you guess it, she died in childbirth. This "deal with the devil" reminds me of Rumpelstiltskin, as does the fact that Ignifex is not his real name and if Nyx can guess his name, she doesn't die. 

Lucky Nyx is born first and thus must be the sacrificial lamb. She is the spitting image of her father, which somehow justifies her being the one to atone for his sin. Astraia, however, is the epitome of their mother and has lived a sheltered, innocent life. The sisters' relationship is strained at times since Nyx is torn between the hate she feels towards her sister for being the lucky one and the sisterly love she should feel. 

"There was ice in my lungs and in my heart. I was floating, I was swept away, and out of the cold I spoke to her in a voice as soft as snow, the gentle and obedient voice that I had used to consent to every order that Father and Aunt Telomache ever gave me, every order they would never give Astraia because they actually loved her...

'The truth is, Mother died because of you, and now I have to die for your sake too. And neither one of us will ever forgive you.'" - Cruel Beauty, 30-31

I didn't like the character of Astraia, she was too little miss perfect and naive. I also didn't like her at the end of the book when she is her alter ego. 

Nyx is married off to Ignifex with a statue of a demon as his proxy. She travels up to his castle and prepares herself to meet this demon and to kill him. This is the only way to save her people from the demons that plague their city. 

Little did she know that it would be harder to kill her husband then she originally thought. She struggles through this whole book with the concept of love & hate and what her duty should be. I loved the interactions between Nyx, Ignifex and his "shadow" known as Shade. Don't worry, this isn't the typical YA love triangle we all have come to know (and me personally, hate). I fell in love with Ignifex right along with Nyx:

"The stories were right that called him 'the sweet-faced calamity.' for he had one of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen...If he had been human, I might have taken him for a gentleman. But his eyes had crimson irises with cat-slit pupils." - Cruel Beauty, 51

"He had seen me, in all my ugliness, and never hated me; and in that moment, nothing else mattered." - Cruel Beauty, 236

I did have my suspicions about Shade and I turned out to be right. J 

The twisted ending that solved the issues surrounding Ignifex and the curse upon the kingdom did seem a bit confusing and far-fetched in my mind but hey, they figured it out and we get our happy ending, so it can be forgiven.

Hodge mixes in the mythology of the gods and Hermeticism, a religious and philosophical tradition that includes magic and alchemy. We mainly see the interaction of the four elements: earth, wind, fire, and water in a magical sense in this book.

This is a fast-paced book that reads quickly and has the elements of mystery and intrigue mixed in with romance and a touch of horror. 

Overall, a wonderful re-telling that fans of such works will enjoy.