#Review - The Beast and the Enchantress by Camille Peters #Retelling #Fantasy #Mythology

Series: A Villain's Ever After # 1
Format: Kindle, 198 pages
Release Date: August 10, 2021
Publisher: Rosewood Publications
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Mythology / Fantasy / Retelling

f there’s one thing Astrid, an aspiring enchantress, has learned throughout her studies, it's that magic must only be used for good. But when an egocentric prince breaks her sister’s heart, Astrid’s only focus is revenge, and what better way to enact it than with a well-chosen curse?

A simple incantation is all it takes to transform the arrogant prince's appearance to match the state of his heart. But something goes wrong, causing the spell to affect not only the prince, but its caster as well. As the curse begins to change her appearance to reflect the state of her own vengeful heart, Astrid becomes desperate to break it at all costs, even if it means entering the castle in disguise and interacting with the prince she loathes.

To her surprise, Astrid encounters not a conceited prince, but one very different from the one she cursed. She soon finds her heart softening, but not in the way she expects—she’s losing it to the cursed prince she has vowed to hate. The closer they become, the more desperate Astrid is to free the prince, and herself, from the curse. But in so doing, she may lose the man she loves forever. For how could a prince ever love the woman who turned him into a beast?

 

The Beast and the Enchantress, by author Camille Peters, is one of twelve short novels in A Villain's Ever After, a collection of standalone stories featuring villainous twists on some of your favorite classic fairy tales. Read the series in any order for magical adventures...and fall in love with villains as you've never seen them before. Who said villains can't have happily-ever-afters? This book is the retelling of Beauty and the Beast with twists.

Astrid is an enchantress-in-training. When she's finished with her apprenticeship, she will serve the crown prince as court magician just as her mentor serves the current king. Astrid's younger sister has a crush on the prince, but when he is cruel to her Astrid sets out to get revenge. She curses Prince Gladen so that his outward appearance will reflect the state of his heart, and when he becomes hideously disfigured Astrid feels justified even though deep down she knows what she did was wrong. 

Unfortunately the curse also affects Astrid herself, and in order to figure out how to break it she has to spend time with the prince. Instead of the callous, self-absorbed monster she'd imagined him to be, she discovers a bitter young man tired of being seen only for his looks and title. The more time she spends with him, the more Astrid loses her own heart to the romantic, bookish person she's discovered lurks under the prince's quick temper. 

I had mixed feelings about Astrid. I admired her devotion to her sister and her love of magic, but her justification in what she does go Gladen goes way beyond being a really bad deal. Then again, Gladen has a bad habit of treating women like a nuisance, and even then, he didn't deserve the anger Astrid puts on him including a dangerous curse that can only be stopped if both characters offer a bit of redemption. 

In the end, this might have been a reimagining of Beauty and the Beast, but it also serves as a cautionary tale about the destructive nature of anger.

Amazon

#Review - Lore by Alexandra Bracken #Fantasy #Contemporary #YA #Mythology

Series: Standalone
Format: Hardcover, 480 pages
Release Date: January 5, 2021
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Contemporary / Legends, Myths, Fables / Greek & Roman

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Darkest Minds comes a sweepingly ambitious, high-octane tale of power, destiny, love, and redemption.

Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals. They are hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.

 

Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world, turning her back on the hunt’s promises of eternal glory after her family was murdered by a rival line. For years she's pushed away any thought of revenge against the man—now a god—responsible for their deaths.

Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek her out: Castor, a childhood friend Lore believed to be dead, and Athena, one of the last of the original gods, now gravely wounded.

The goddess offers an alliance against their mutual enemy and a way to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore's decision to rejoin the hunt, binding her fate to Athena's, will come at a deadly cost—and it may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees.

 

Lore, by author Alexandra Bracken, was created out of the authors own childhood love of Greek mythology as well as her own Greek heritage and the stories of her immigrant grandparents, to dream up a secret network of ancient families--descendants of Greek heroes--battling for immortality and dominance. This novel turns the misogyny and violence against women running through Greek mythology on its head, reclaiming the hero's journey and reversing our ideas about heroes and monsters. Thousands of years ago, 9 gods—Athena, Artemis, Poseidon, Dionysus, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, and Ares—staged a failed revolution against Zeus. 

As punishment, they are doomed to face the Agon every seven years. “For 7 days every 7 years, the Gods walk the Earth as mortals. If you can kill one, you become a new God and take their power and immortality. But you’ll be hunted again and again until only one remains whole.” Only 4 bloodlines still participate in the Agon. Aphrodite (Heartkeeper), Dionysus (The Reveler), Poseidon (Tidebringer), and Ares (Wrath) are deceased as the current Agon begins and replaced by so called new Gods. Melora (Lore) Perseous is the last of her line from the legendary hero, Perseus and is largely alone in the world after hiding from the Agon and its members for many years once her family was murdered by their opponents.

Lore thinks she has escaped the Agon until one day she returns home and finds the goddess Athena, mortal and open to attack and the theft of her powers by anyone who kills her, bleeding out on her front porch. After binding her fate with Athena, she goes into the hunt to fight a new God to avenge her family and save her home, New York City. With the upcoming hunt, comes the reappearance of her childhood friend Castor. Lore discovers that Castor, the childhood friend she believed was dead, actually ascended as the new Apollo seven years ago.

I am going to actually say that this book is on the dark side. This is, after all, a sort of last person standing war with plenty of blood and death. If you are a lover of Greek Mythology, you are going to really enjoy this YA standalone. As fragile alliances are formed and Lore struggles to keep those she cares about safe until the end of the Agon, she can't help but remember the heinous crimes done to her in the past and the person she used to be. Except for Miles who she took in, Lore has been alone for many years and only survived because she was kept hidden. Until now.

Lore is complex, flawed, has a temper, has lots of baggage, and struggles to process her guilt, past traumas, and grapples with the idea of destiny (or the "Fates") and whether she is truly in control of herself. The entirety of this story takes place over 7 days, so the action is hot and hectic and for a book that is almost 500 pages long, nearly continuous. The ending is both surprising and open ending. Yes, there really could have been a different ending, and yes, there really could have been a sequel had the author and publisher desired.  

 

Amazon | Audible | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository