THE PYRE - His storied stronghold deep in the Forrest of Naeethe, its glory forgotten, its ancient purposes abandoned
AND I, EMBER - Sent by the Lights to stop him from becoming the one thing that all nations fear the most. (Summary and pic from goodreads.com)
My Review: I’m excited to review this book today because I’m betting
it’s one you haven’t heard of. I personally love when people tell me about a
book that was not on my radar at all, and it’s even better when I really enjoy
the book. I may be a professional book reviewer, and I do listen to book
podcasts and read book lists and subscribe to publishers’ lists of new and
upcoming books, plus spend a lot of time doing nerdy book lover things, but
there are just a lot of books coming out all the time. It’s hard to keep up with
All the Books. I’ve found that when people post on Facebook “I’m looking for a
new book to read!” I’ve heard of and possibly read many of the books that are
on there, or at least heard of the author. Not every single book all the time, of
course, but a good portion of them at least. Beast of Ten was not on one of those lists, and actually was chosen
by a woman in my book club because it is written by a local (to my book club)
author. It wasn’t available in our library and it’s a new release, so I’m
excited to introduce this to you, in hopes that you haven’t heard of it or read
it. I picked my copy up on Amazon, but it is also available on Barnes &
Noble and possibly other places as well.
I don’t know about you but I have enjoyed the new
re-telling of old fairytales genre. I’ve read several, some are YA fic and some
are adult fic, and I would say this one is somewhere between those and
therefore New Adult Fic. I like the fresh new perspective and have enjoyed the re-tellings overall. Beast of Ten is a
re-imagined “Beauty and the Beast.” It’s not exactly like it, and indeed the
woman who picked it didn’t even recognize it as such until her daughter pointed
it out to her. However, she told our book club that that’s what it was based on
so while I was reading it it was very obvious to me that it was a retelling of that classic.
So what is the same and what is different? Well, it’s got
the same basic characters, but they are much more fleshed out and there are
many more, several of whom are very important characters. There is also a lot
of magic, much more so than the original story, and I actually really enjoyed
that. I’m not much of a high fantasy person, although every time I say that I can
think of several examples of high fantasy that I really enjoyed, but in general
I’m not really into high fantasy. This book, although definitely involving
magic, had a lot of almost magical realism elements, which I thought were awesome.
I love me some well-done magical realism. I love the idea of normal people
having normal-esque powers that are just powerful enough to maybe be beyond the
realm of normalcy, but maybe not. This book has a lot of that. One of my favorite characters in the book is
actually the beast’s castle, and I don’t want to spoil it for you but it plays
a major role in this story, and one in which I thought was really cool and
really imaginative. There is also one character that is huge in this story that
is not in the original “Beauty and the Beast.” Many of the more peripheral characters in the original story are also more prominent in this one, which was enjoyable.
I really enjoyed the story in this book. It is really
allegorical, and I thought it was a very imaginative and interesting way to
look at the original story. It is a long book, which gives it a lot of time to
be developed and the characters and story fleshed out. It didn’t seem like a
long slog, though, and many women in our book club read it on their phones with
no problem at all (I am fundamentally opposed to reading on electronic devices
because I am old and stodgy). We had a good discussion in our book club, and almost
everybody really enjoyed the book. I think everybody did, actually, but some
wouldn’t commit either way (they’re like that. Haha). If you are into
fairytales, especially if you are a “Beauty and the Beast” lover, I recommend
you check out this book for a fun retelling and a re-imagined view of the old
story. Don’t be expecting beautiful Disney princesses skipping down the French
countryside singing “I want much more than this provincial life!” but do be
prepared for some good writing and some good storytelling in a familiar yet different
world.
My Rating: 4 Stars
For the sensitive
reader: This book is clean, although there is some discussion of evil doings
such as murder, but nothing seriously graphic or gratuitously descriptive.
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