Beauty and the Werewolf

So here I am again, this time with a book review because, being a voracious - and starving - reader, I devour books by the plateful. Unfortunately most of the books coming out these days are cheap fast food (continuing with the eating metaphor), but this time I have found a book that I like a whole whole lot. It was delicious. Probably bad for me, but delicious.

Before I continue, I'm going to make a brief statement about my preferences regarding certain types of red meat. What? Why? Because it's relevant. So I love beef. Steak, hamburgers, ground beef with pasta, meatballs with spaghetti - I love it. I prefer my beef lean (between 93-97% lean, actually) because I'm not fond of tons of grease or fat. This is one of the reasons why I am not fond of venison.

For some reason, cow meat and cow fat are separate. The fat tends to congregate to certain parts of the meat and stay there, so you can actually cut it off before you cook it. My mom also does this with chicken, my dad used to do it with porkchops, and you can really tell with steaks. But venison doesn't do that. The fat is threaded throughout the meat, so you just kinda have to leave most of it there, and you get really fatty meat. Why is this relevant to the book that I read?

Most of the books that I read and adore are beef steak or porkchops - delicious meat, and the chef (editor/agent/publisher/writer) has kindly trimmed the fat already. This book, which is called Beauty and the Werewolf (sounds lame, I know, but it's so not) unfortunately is a venison steak. Lots of fat and icky threaded throughout the book. What's odd about this is that although I could taste the icky fat that needed to be trimmed, I couldn't stop eating. Or in this case, reading. So with that extended metaphorical preface in place, onward to the book itself.

Beauty and the Werewolf is book six of a series by Mercedes Lackey called Tales of the 500 Kingdoms. Each book is about the world of fairy tales ("Cinderella," "Little Mermaid," "Sleeping Beauty," etc.) and how this mindless but incredibly powerful magical force of nature called The Tradition tries to mold the 500 Kingdoms and the people in those Kingdoms into certain storybook and fairy tale characters.

As an example, the MC of book one, The Fairy Godmother, was supposed to be a Cinder Girl - her name was Elena, she had a dead father, wicked stepmother, two wicked stepsisters, and was forced by said wicked relations to be their veritable slave. The Tradition kept shoving her around, dumping more and more magic in, on, and around her, trying to force her into meeting the Prince and going to the ball and all of that stuff. Unfortunately, the Prince of her Kingdom was eleven years old. She's twenty-one. That doesn't really work, does it? So instead, the magic being poured into her by The Tradition enabled her to become an Apprentice Fairy Godmother. It's actually a brilliant idea, really.

Anyway, as this relates to Beauty and the Werewolf. Bella (short for Isabella) has the stepmother and stepsisters, though neither are wicked. Unconsciously Bella has been doing everything in her power to flout The Tradition and prevent her stepmother and stepsisters from becoming evil through its influence. Because there isn't so much that smacks of "Cinderella" here, it's fairly easy to prevent The Tradition from doing something crazy (oftentimes, it's not).

And then it all gets ruined when Bella makes the mistake of donning a red riding cloak and going out into the woods to see the local Granny (sort of like the local White Witch). Does this ring any bells for anyone? I'll give you a hint - she also runs into a Woodsman on the way, and a werewolf. Actually that's not entirely fair, lol. This book, like nearly all the books in this series, is a combination of fairy tales. In this instance, it's "Little Red Riding Hood" meets "Beauty and the Beast." And a well-done combination. =)

Where the venison-fat comes in is this: Bella is kind of a witch. I mean, she's bratty. Not at the beginning, oh no, or I would never have been able to get into the book. She's actually great in the beginning. But once she meets the werewolf in his human form, she's horrible to him. And he's a really sweet guy.

I don't know if any of my readers watch Avatar: Legend of Korra, but this guy is kind of like the earth-bender character Bolin, except about seven years older. He's really sorry that he bit her (and it wasn't even a bad bite, she could still walk and everything) and he apologizes and basically pledges to be her slave to make it up to her, and her attitude is basically, "Good, because that's the least you owe me, you flea-bitten jerk."

For a time, I wondered if part of this story was that Bella, in the reverse guise of The Beast, had to learn to be nicer, but no - she never changed. She started being nicer to him over time, but she never let go of this "you owe me" attitude or felt bad about it in retrospect. She just took it for granted that Sebastian, the werewolf, would do all these things for her just because he'd bitten her by accident. For a part of the book, I wanted to smack her.

However, despite this, I found Bella - for the most part in her dealings with everyone else - incredibly likeable. Her lack of wimpiness was refreshing, as was her lack of Rebellious Princess Syndrome. I suppose Mercedes Lackey felt she had to make Bella kind of waspish with her Beast to offset all of the sweet Beauty-Characters in other renditions of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale, but still.

She had so many other innovative ideas to keep the story fresh, why do that?

- The origin of the invisible servants (never seen it done this way before)

- The origin of the Beast's curse (never seen it done that way, either)

- His actual beast-form (only seen a Beast with a wolf-form in like, 4 versions of the story)

- The fact that the Beast was a sorcerer (only seen it in Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley and The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey)

- The fact that the Beast has a brother who lives with him in his castle (never seen that, either)

- Even just how sweet the Beast character is (never seen that; not that sweet)

All of those things make this story a fresh and refreshing take on Beauty and the Beast. Combining it with "Little Red Riding Hood" helped immensely as well. I don't think I've ever seen that done before, and I read a lot of fairy tale adaptations.

So although Bella is kind of witchy to Sebastian at various points in the story, and makes me want to slap her sometimes, I actually do recommend this book. I also hope to get it either for my birthday or for Christmas at some point. Rarely if ever do I spend money on things that aren't straight-up needs, so I'm always careful about what books I ask for from other people as gifts. The fact that this book made my list is saying a lot.

Maybe I'll give venison another shot now....

- LA

PS - I haven't actually finished any of the other books in this series, but so far The Fairy Godmother, The Sleeping Beauty, and Fortune's Fool are looking promising. I desperately want to get my hands on The Snow Queen, but the library doesn't have it. Grrrr....