Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What an interesting book! I honestly just thought this was a medieval fairy-tale-ish take on the original legend of Sleeping Beauty, handed to us with real history, interesting magic, and enough grim to satisfy both the Grim Bros and GRRM.

That's what I THOUGHT, anyway, as I was getting into the tale.

It's a bit deeper than that, however, and it subverts both this cross-genre by tackling MOST sub-genres, giving us a big taste of time-travel, Fae, big-time environmentalism, and even science fiction.

Sound complicated? It isn't, really. It's a tale of a Beauty that lives a full, interesting life of love, discovery, wanderlust, tragedy, opportunism, trickery, and survival. We could call this a feminist tale, and I'm sure quite a few would, but I see it as a very rounded one with tons of surprises. I mean, yes, it's a modern retelling of the classic, but it seems to incorporate a ton more myths than I ever would have guessed at first glance. And the scope and tack of the tragedies are very different than I might have guessed.

This is a very good thing. We, as readers, LIKE to be surprised. I think this one is a wonderful surprise.

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