A Terrible Beauty

A Terrible Beauty is an interesting and thoughtful revision of the classic Beauty and the Beast tale. It's very well written and has fully developed characters and beautiful imagery. This is the type of writing to which other sci-fi/horror authors should aspire. It is a travesty that Baker's books are no longer in print.

The book is called A Terrible Beauty, which is more like Terribly Cheesy for a title. Between that and the art on the cover of a black-haired pale skinned woman with dark red lips, I figured someone had sent me wanky vampire romance fluff. I've read some of that before, to be brutally honest, but sort of with the same air that you watch really bad horror movies and are amused by them anyway. I was curious though, and started reading the book, discovering that it didn't have the tone really of wanky romance fluff unless it was going to suddenly jump into it later. The prose was engaging, the tale was told in a way that unfolded slowly, leaving you curious. The narration was a nice third person... err, wow, all my studies of literature fail me as I forget the term, omniscient perhaps? Where you know what the person is feeling. The author managed to successfully switch back and forth between points of view occasionally without it feeling strange and without giving too much of the mystery away. The cadence of the lines and the introspection of the character exploration has stuck with me even after finishing it. As I finished the story, the way things came together at the end moved me to tears. I LOVED this book.