Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I was raised to marry a monster.
How’s that for a first line?
From that moment we are immersed in a world which has been ripped out of time, suffering a curse which Nyx has been pledged from birth to try to break by marriage to the demon lord Ignifex. When she finds Ignifex is not simply what he seems on the surface, she is torn between her vow to her people and her love for a complex person. And in this world the Greek gods punish vow-breaking with a vengeance, so this is a serious problem.
I read this book faster and faster so that by the end I knew I was heedlessly missing details. But the plot was the thing that kept me reading until midnight two nights in a row. This is a romance and it’s a good one. After all it is based on Beauty and the Beast, albeit very loosely. However, the author tells it with a freshness and immediacy that makes me think of Robin Mckinley’s The Blue Sword, which is some of my highest praise.
I am amazed this is a first book. Hodge took the Beauty and the Beast story and mixed it up with Greek mythology and a few other classics that I won’t mention here for fear of spoilers. The result is a completely new soup* that doesn’t seem derivative in any way. It is complex, compelling, and Tolkien-esque in the way big themes and truths are woven seamlessly into the story. It is C.S. Lewis-ian (is that a term?) in the way that source materials are woven seamlessly into a completely new story a la Til We Had Faces (yet so much more understandable to a schmoe like me.).
It is not without flaws, but they are few and forgivable as quirks. They are fairly minor and annoy no more than a few gnats so I’ll not go into detail about them.
Above all I was struck by the underlying themes of the masks we hide behind, the real meaning of love, the many forms selfishness can take, the value of intention in sacrifice, the price of trying to control fate, and the fact everyone has more layers than you can see at first glance.
Cruel Beauty is being marketed as a YA novel and it fulfills those requirements in that I’d let my 9th grader read it if I still had one around the house. However, I miss the days when there was no YA designation and one could pick it up, as I did The Blue Sword long ago, without the preconceptions of a label. This is a story that adults can definitely enjoy. Be not afraid.
This book is a masterpiece and should become a classic. Certainly it is one I will be rereading more than once. I want to shove it into everyone’s hands and force them to read it so we can talk about it.
Do yourself a favor and pick it up.
NOTES
1. This is a review copy and I’m friends with the author’s brother and sister-in-law. Believe me, that all made me rather leery than inclined to shove this book into everyone’s hands. This “shove-this-book-into-everyone’s-hands” review is my honest opinion.
2. I’ve been asked if guys would like this book. I asked the author’s brother who is not prone to read “girly books” and you may read his answer in the comments for his review at Goodreads.
3. Catholics will be happy to note that I used Tolkien-esque deliberately. Everything Hodge has here is solidly Catholic in basic worldview, despite the fact that the only gods mentioned are pagan. Which is as it should be. The story is the thing. The solid values that are the bones of this soup* give it depth and savor, but do not intrude upon a fine tale.
*THE SOUP
From Tolkien’s essay On Fairy-Stories.
In Dasent’s words I would say: “We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.” Though, oddly enough, Dasent by “the soup” meant a mishmash of bogus pre-history founded on the early surmises of Comparative Philology; and by “desire to see the bones” he meant a demand to see the workings and the proofs that led to these theories. By “the soup” I mean the story as it is served up by its author or teller, and by “the bones” its sources or material—even when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not, of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup.
Emphasis mine. Everyone leaves that bit off and I always feel I can see Tolkien smiling as he wrote it.
Janet,
To my knowledge _Cruel Beauty_ has not been submitted for the CWG’s Seal of Approval award. Julie’s book reviews are, like all the columns that run on this blog, Julie’s opinion only, and not formal pronouncements from the CWG.
If it’s clear that a member’s column has in some way strayed from faithfulness to the Magisterium, however unwittingly, we do issue a correction or retraction.
Please keep in mind that the bulk of Julie’s reviews fall under the “looking for the true, beautiful, and good wherever it may be found,” and that she reviews many books that have literary merit even though they are not, in any strict sense, “Catholic” books.
That’s something Julie does exceptionally well: She takes what the culture presents us, shakes it up and sorts it out.
I would be very happy to run a guest review of _Cruel Beauty_ from a different vantage point, if you find after reading the book that it does indeed cause one to be tempted into idolatry.
Jennifer.
Jennifer Fitz
Vice President, Catholic Writers Guild
Editor of the Catholic Writers Guild Blog
Thanks, Jennifer! Much to learn, right? We want to be good stewards, but it’s hard.
Could I ask, because I may misunderstand the intent of this Guild-related page, is this a review, but not a Guild endorsement?
Hi Janet … I don’t have any idea if this book has Guild endorsement. I was asked to contribute to the blog by doing book reviews of whatever I was reading … and it is well known by anyone who read my blog Happy Catholic (as did the person who asked me to contribute) that I read anything and everything. I always focus it through my faith.
I’d also say that, in this case, this book is going to reach tons and tons of young women. The publisher is putting a huge push behind it. And though the gods are mentioned, they personally do not come into play here, aside from a household god who is managed very much as a character I enjoyed a great deal. (Not that that answers your objections.)
I myself love the fact that this author is so wholly Catholic in their writing and in the extremely Catholic worldview that is at the foundation of the characters in the book. Their ultimate strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations were gradually revealed and I would give an inward cheer for how well they were handled … and also how I felt they’d be recognized as core truths by the readers, although they’d not realize that was why they were applauding the various actions. (If that makes sense.) It is like fighting an underground action in a war, as C.S. Lewis might say. They may come for the alternate telling of Beauty and the Beast, they will return for the satisfaction of those truths. That is the secret to the Lord of the Rings, Narnia, the space trilogy by Lewis, and even, in large part, Miss Marple. 🙂
I think it makes a difference whether these are fantasy gods or historical pagan gods. Also, thanks for the clarification regarding the post. I looked through all the lists and didn’t see this book as having received Guild endorsement. I’m really new, don’t know how things work at all. I’m working on a sci fi novel, and I guess it would be classified as realistic–anyway the only God is trinitarian. It’s been so long since those classifications mattered to me, as I have written non-fiction most of my life. To me, the kicker is what the text says and how readers receive it. The encyclical Pascendi anticipated current media science by exposing a way of planting meaning in readers’ minds by a series of half-finished sentences or images, mere suggestions of meaning that if challenged, would pass as orthodox, but which set up a resonance in the reader that almost inevitably lead to the intended unorthodox conclusion. The poetry of inculcation. I believe the way Narnia passes muster on it is that nothing in the text argues against the existence of God and very many things argue for the attributes of God, let me put it that way, the bus is coming–truth, beauty, justice, fighting evil. So. Thanks for your work, and I am ordering the book next time I go by the library.
… nothing in the text argues against the existence of God and very many things argue for the attributes of God, let me put it that way, the bus is coming–truth, beauty, justice, fighting evil.
Precisely. That is the way with Tolkien’s writing also. I’ll be curious to see what you think once you’ve read the book. 🙂
Hi Janet. We may be at an impasse here, because I’ve never understood why being a Christian means one must ignore the beams of God’s light that come from sources which don’t explicitly mention Christ. J.R.R. Tolkien’s explanation to C.S. Lewis (which wound up in his conversion) was of the fact that God has a hand in all myth, but that Christ is the true Myth (that is the true story) which all stories/myths reflect. They may reflect them in less than the fullness of truth (as in fact is the case with all religions except ours), but they are like splinters of light which can be followed to the truth if one perseveres enough.
The Narnia Chronicles are a reflection of that sort of story. In fact, this book, Cruel Beauty, is the same sort of story. The pagan gods are not standing in for Christ. When I said that it “is as it should be” I meant that the truth of that particular universe required such continuity. It is the story itself, above and beyond those pagan gods, which communicates the Catholic teachings I mentioned. And that, as you’d probably agree, truly IS as it should be. 🙂
One need not enjoy or appreciate such story telling, but it does in fact reflect solid Catholic teachings. You need not take my word for it, but then you would have to read it and judge for yourself. Which I urge you to do. However, if it isn’t your cup of tea then I’d just skip it. We need not all enjoy or get value from the same sort of book. That is the pleasure in having so many to choose from.
Thanks for your reply. I imagine I will have to get the book to see if I can put it together with your very reasonable explanation. The thing of it is, even though we might appreciate the ‘beams of God’s light that come from sources that don’t mention Christ,’ in this case apparently paganism, do they get the Guild stamp? It would be so difficult to see the name Catholic associated with the likes of Mercury and Vesta, after our protracted historical struggle against them. There are only two religions, actually, and they go with two ways of life: Catholic, and pagan (for once the credo is denied the rest is pretty much an empty shell). The former is associated with the gradual liberation of slaves into serfdom and finally into fully franchised and fully endowed owners of land and tools, by the end of the middle ages. Paganism was everywhere (and for much longer) a society of a few living off the slave labor of the many. To put paganism in a positive light is to seem to undo all that hard work–just when our society has once again stripped us of that land and our tools and is steadily returning us to slavery. I don’t see beams of light from that source, I see shackles both philosophically and economically, or socially. I’ll get the book, though, and try to see what you mean.
“Everything Hodge has here is solidly Catholic in basic worldview, despite the fact that the only gods mentioned are pagan. Which is as it should be.”
I just don’t get this. What about, ‘I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange gods before me.’ What about those martyrs who refused to offer incense to pagan gods and died for it? I do not see how one can have a ‘solidly Catholic’ worldview and at the same time allow pagan gods to stand-in for Christ. Does this book have the Guild seal of approval? And meets that standard? Does Tolkien (not a fan, personally) actually have pagan or even other gods with unfamiliar names running around in his world?