Scan barcode
A review by angek98
Hunted by Meagan Spooner
4.0
.
It's been a hot minute since I read a retelling, and this one was an excellent one to get back into it.
Beauty and the Beast isn't my favourite fairytale, and I feel like most retellings are very much inspired by the Disney movie, rather than going back further and trying to find the roots of this story, evident in Egyptian and Greek mythology, and the earlier versions of Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve or Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, or Andrew Lang.
In this one, you certainly get a sense of the inspiration of this story. I noticed parallels between the myth of Eros and Psyche, La Belle et la Bēte (1949), and of course, the Disney movie.
You get a sense of a deeply loved story, and a well researched fairy-tale in this one, with fresh new aspects, most notably in the form of the setting, in medieval Russia.
As well as Beauty and the Beast, it's also heavily influenced by Russian fairytales, which brings an interesting development to the world, making the setting fresh and new, and overrun with different societal standards, though I'm not too sure how much research went into the setting, other than the fairytales.
Now, there are all the usual concerns for a Beauty and the Beast retelling, and this one is probably not the best retelling out there in regards to the usual YA trope of the agressive man (though its kinda subverted a little for spoilery reasons), but our protagonist, Yeva is certainly not playing a passive role in this.
Theres also something exciting about a novel without a villain or antagonist. It's a character driven story that does everything you expect a fairy tale retelling to do, but also adds in little twists and turns that make it a darker, interesting story.
It's been a hot minute since I read a retelling, and this one was an excellent one to get back into it.
Beauty and the Beast isn't my favourite fairytale, and I feel like most retellings are very much inspired by the Disney movie, rather than going back further and trying to find the roots of this story, evident in Egyptian and Greek mythology, and the earlier versions of Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve or Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, or Andrew Lang.
In this one, you certainly get a sense of the inspiration of this story. I noticed parallels between the myth of Eros and Psyche, La Belle et la Bēte (1949), and of course, the Disney movie.
You get a sense of a deeply loved story, and a well researched fairy-tale in this one, with fresh new aspects, most notably in the form of the setting, in medieval Russia.
As well as Beauty and the Beast, it's also heavily influenced by Russian fairytales, which brings an interesting development to the world, making the setting fresh and new, and overrun with different societal standards, though I'm not too sure how much research went into the setting, other than the fairytales.
Now, there are all the usual concerns for a Beauty and the Beast retelling, and this one is probably not the best retelling out there in regards to the usual YA trope of the agressive man (though its kinda subverted a little for spoilery reasons), but our protagonist, Yeva is certainly not playing a passive role in this.
Theres also something exciting about a novel without a villain or antagonist. It's a character driven story that does everything you expect a fairy tale retelling to do, but also adds in little twists and turns that make it a darker, interesting story.