Can beauty be cruel?

Book Review: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Synopsis from the Back Cover:

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom—all because of a reckless bargain her father struck. And since birth, she has been training to kill him.

Betrayed by her family yet bound to obey, Nyx rails against her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, she abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, disarm him, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

But Ignifex is not what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle—a shifting maze of magical rooms—enthralls her. As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. But even if she can bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him?

Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.

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My thoughts:

How did the author do it? How did she turn characters so twisted and bitter into people I ended up caring for? At which point did my emotions start turning in their favor? Throughout this book, I was wondering who is cruel and who is not, who is heroic and who is not, who is real and who is not, what is illusion and what is not. Is Ignifex Gentle? Is Nyx the Beauty? Is Shade a shadow? Are the Kindly Ones kind? Is the sparrow a bird? Is the Arcadia sky a sky?

The author turns every element of fairy tale on its head by making her characters seemingly unlikable yet strong, by mixing mythology and horror with a dark yet satisfying romance. Mingled with the Beauty and the Beast story are fragments from Rumpelstiltskin, the French folk tale of  Blue Beard, the Greek myths of Hades and Persephone and Pandora's box, and even references to alchemy.

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The imagery of the land of Arcadia is fantastic - I could almost visualize the shifting shadows:

Demons are made of shadow. Don't look at the shadows too long or a demon might look back.

Every room and hallway in the Gentle Lord's castle is ever changing and mysterious, every door opens into some strange illusion:

The house changes. It has a will and it changes at its own caprice.

The room with the dead wives is horrifying, but the Children of Typhon are the creepiest of them all:

They sang from all around me, a million bodiless children whisper-chanting in my ears:

Five for the symbols at your door,
Telling us your name, oh.
Four for the corners of your world,
We are always nibbling, oh.

Shadows dribbled down my face and welled up out of my skin. The shadows in the hall responded, coming alive. I wanted to claw my skin off, to gnaw the flesh from my bones, anything to get the shadows out of me...

Just like the illusions in the castle, the characters in the story are flawed and difficult to categorize too. Nyx is neither good nor accepting of her fate, and her feelings are always conflicted. She resents that she was chosen to be the wife of the Lord of Bargains and not Astraia, her twin sister:

She smiles because she is safe. She is safe because I am going to die.

She is bitter but brave underneath her scars:

He said: "This house had many dangers. I cannot save you from most of them."....
Then I let go and forced a smile. "I wasn't born to be saved."

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Nyx's relationship with Ignifex is the most complex of all:

I knelt over him and smiled down into his face. My body was wrapped in ice; my voice came from somewhere very far away.
"Do you think you are safe with me?"

Both Nyx and Ignifex are conflicted and deeply flawed, yet something tender starts growing from the bitterness and enmity. We start seeing a different side to both of them:

"You deserve all of that and more. It made me happy to see you suffer. I would do it all over again if I could." 
I realized I was shaking as the words tumbled out of me. 
"I would do it again and again. Every night I would torment you and laugh. Do you understand? You are never safe with me." 
I drew a shuddering breath, trying to will away the sting of tears.

He opened his eyes and stared up at me as if I were the door out of Arcadia and back to the true sky. "That's what makes you my favorite." 
He reached up and wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. 
"Every wicked part of you."

The writing, as must be apparent by now, is lush and lyrical,

I could feel every contour of the space between us, and I wondered if this weakness was visible, if it glimmered off my body like an oily film on water.

...and portrays wondrous images:

“Have you seen lamplight shine through dusty air, setting the dust motes on fire?” 
He waved a hand. “Imagine that, spread across the night sky—but ten thousand motes and ten thousand times brighter, glittering like the eyes of all the gods.”

The author tantalizingly leaves some clever riddles strewn around, hinting at the solution:

The Kindly Ones liked to leave answers at the edges, where anyone could see them but nobody does.

Ultimately, it remains a story of two flawed individuals discovering that love may not always be beautiful but a handful of kindness can redeem cruelty.

Though mountains melt and oceans burn,
The gifts of love shall still return.
Where you go, I shall go;
Where you die, I shall die,
and there will I be buried.

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