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duddlepuck 's review for:
Beauty
by Sheri S. Tepper
As you can probably tell from my score, I have rather mixed thoughts about this book. Tepper's 'Beauty' creatively retells the tales of a number of recognisable fairytale characters. However these are often very bleak and gritty.
Interestingly she employs the premises of time travelling and parallel worlds to weave strong messages of environmentalism and religion.
Having just set the book aside, here's a list of some of my impressions:
Things I enjoyed:
Seeing the character Beauty discovering and bringing about parallels between Disney's films and the events occurring to her own family.
The mixture of sci-fi, fantasy and fairytales.
Beauty's loving (if inconsistent) love for Grumpkin, Puck, Giles and her faery allies.
Beauty and her mother Elladine's ever changing relationship.
The environmentalist theme running through the book (although this was a little strong at times).
The idea of horror desensitising us.
Tepper's portrayal of a woman coming to terms with ageing and mortality impressed me. I haven't read a lot of other books covering this in such a heartfelt and honest way. (Stephen King's 'Insomnia' is another book that features ageing beautifully.)
The description of the faery host at the end if the book. Having recognised a few of the names, I wanted to go away and read more of their own legends.
Tepper's beautifully vivid descriptions.
Things that didn't float my boat:
Sime of the grittier aspects of the book; for example the rape and seven dwarves attitudes.
Almost all female characters were very unlike able...
I found myself skipping passages as the time travelling caused me to lose my investment in any given situation. When reading about her visits to the twenty first century I just couldn't wait for her to get back to what was going on back in her time!
So... quite a mixed bag all in all!
Interestingly she employs the premises of time travelling and parallel worlds to weave strong messages of environmentalism and religion.
Having just set the book aside, here's a list of some of my impressions:
Things I enjoyed:
Seeing the character Beauty discovering and bringing about parallels between Disney's films and the events occurring to her own family.
The mixture of sci-fi, fantasy and fairytales.
Beauty's loving (if inconsistent) love for Grumpkin, Puck, Giles and her faery allies.
Beauty and her mother Elladine's ever changing relationship.
The environmentalist theme running through the book (although this was a little strong at times).
The idea of horror desensitising us.
Tepper's portrayal of a woman coming to terms with ageing and mortality impressed me. I haven't read a lot of other books covering this in such a heartfelt and honest way. (Stephen King's 'Insomnia' is another book that features ageing beautifully.)
The description of the faery host at the end if the book. Having recognised a few of the names, I wanted to go away and read more of their own legends.
Tepper's beautifully vivid descriptions.
Things that didn't float my boat:
Sime of the grittier aspects of the book; for example the rape and seven dwarves attitudes.
Almost all female characters were very unlike able...
I found myself skipping passages as the time travelling caused me to lose my investment in any given situation. When reading about her visits to the twenty first century I just couldn't wait for her to get back to what was going on back in her time!
So... quite a mixed bag all in all!