Tag Archives: fairy tale retelling

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Book Review: Beauty & the Necromancer, by Kate Seger

Kate Seger‘s Beauty and the Necromancer kept passing my TikTok feed. I suppose I was influenced because I decided to get a copy and give it a read. To my great surprise, I discovered that I already owned the series. I think I must have picked it up in a freebie event at some point. I love it when this happens!

beauty and the necromancer cover

When Beauty steals into the cursed lands of Eldritch Manor to save her starving family, she finds herself ensnared by its master— Darius, the dreaded Necromancer. Amidst a crumbling gothic manor where the dead dance and lost souls wail, an unlikely and dangerous passion ignites between captive and captor.

Beauty sees humanity buried beneath Darius’s monstrous exterior, while Darius, enthralled by her defiant spirit, remembers the man he once was. Together, they seek to break Darius’s curse. But vengeful forces in Beauty’s village soon threaten to tear the lovers apart.

my review

Sadly, this was a flop for me. So much so that even though I have book two, I’m not going to bother reading it. I feel like I’ve done my due diligence by at least finishing this one. I have two primary complaints…well, three, but the third is a personal preference kind of thing.

The first is the writing. It’s readable, I don’t mean to say it isn’t. But it’s the purplest purple prose that ever purple prosed. For me to complain about this is a sign of how purple it is, because I’m generally pretty tolerant of purple prose. Seger’s writing surpassed even my generous allowance for flowery speech.

Second, I’m unsure where the line between copying and retelling lies. However, this definitely falls much more closely to a carbon copy of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast than any retelling that uses the fairytale as its source material. Sure, Seger changed the names (And we won’t even touch how blunt changing Belle’s name to Beauty is in this scenario or that her mother’s name is Marybelle). The beast is a shadowy necromancer, rather than furry, but the plot points align precisely. So exactly, in fact, that by the end, I was literally calling them. “It’s time to go to the garden now.” “It’s time for Gaston (Harrow) to show back up.” “It’s time for the angry Beast to make an appearance.” Honestly, while I don’t think this is actually the case, I almost beauty and the necromancer photofeel like this reads as if Seger gave ChatGPT a “Write me a Beauty and the Beast story” prompt and this is the result*.

Third, and on the personal preference front, this is far too sappy and sweet toward the end. This is an issue for me, both because it happens far too quickly and there isn’t enough substance to support it, and because it’s not believable (or for me, pleasant to read).

*After I wrote this review, I googled “Does author Kate Seger use AI to write?” This is what came up. So, maybe I wasn’t so off the mark, after all. Here, the author claims to use AI to revise already-written scenes that she believes could be improved. I felt, in reading this book, that AI outlined or structured it, plotted it out. The book feels AI-generated to me. But I’m not dropping any sort of allegation. I’m a university student, and I know far too many people writing essays that AI-detectors are calling AI-generated because they know how to use an em dash, etc. (Hell, I use Grammarly, and I swear sometimes it wants to rewrite my sentences so extremely that it could probably be considered AI.)  I’m just saying the book/plot feels the same as many AI-generated pieces of writing do.


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Book Review: Assistant to the Villain, by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

I borrowed an audio copy of Hannah Nicole Maehrer‘s Assistant to the Villain through Hoopla.
assistant to the villain audio cover

ASSISTANT WANTED: Notorious, high-ranking villain seeks loyal, levelheaded assistant for unspecified office duties, supporting staff for random mayhem, terror, and other Dark Things In General. Discretion a must. Excellent benefits.

With ailing family to support, Evie Sage’s employment status isn’t just important, it’s vital. So when a mishap with Rennedawn’s most infamous Villain results in a job offer—naturally, she says yes. No job is perfect, of course, but even less so when you develop a teeny crush on your terrifying, temperamental, and undeniably hot boss. Don’t find evil so attractive, Evie.

But just when she’s getting used to severed heads suspended from the ceiling and the odd squish of an errant eyeball beneath her heel, Evie suspects this dungeon has a huge rat…and not just the literal kind. Because something rotten is growing in the kingdom of Rennedawn, and someone wants to take the Villain—and his entire nefarious empire—out.

Now Evie must not only resist drooling over her boss but also figure out exactly who is sabotaging his work…and ensure he makes them pay.

After all, a good job is hard to find.

my review

I have got to stop letting TikTok convince me to read books. I’m having difficulty remembering a book that left me feeling as let down as this one did. First off, how did I miss that this is set in a fairytale setting? I’ll accept that the fact that I missed this is probably on me. But I was 100% put off when I finally realized what I had really signed on for in choosing to read this book. Just go ahead and preemptively roll your eyes. You’ll want to before you get very far into this story.

I could nitpick a million reasons this book didn’t work for me. But there are a few main ones I will concentrate on. First, I was bored silly. The book is working hard to be quirky and, yes, silly. But I’m fairly sure being bored silly was not the aim. There is far too little plot to keep a reader engaged. Second, the author tries far, far too hard to be funny, and most of the jokes don’t land. Third, how exactly are you going to title a book Assistant to the Villian and then write a villain that isn’t really a villain? I was incredibly disappointed and somehow also not at all surprised by this fact. Fourth, while the villain may not be villainous, he also isn’t particularly charismatic, and the heroine is a bland Mary Jane. Fifth, it ends on a cliffhanger…because, of course, it does. Sixth, the narrator (Em Eldridge) was wrong for the book. She did a fine technical job but didn’t carry it off in a tone that worked for the story.


Other Reviews:

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

 

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Book review: The Bone Way, by Holly J. Underhill

I purchased a copy of The Bone Way by Holly J. Underhill.

Teagan’s wife, Cressidae, is missing. She has left for the Shadow Realm, a kingdom of the dead filled with untold nightmares—and the only place that can save Teagan from a lethal poison that’s killing her slowly. It is ruled by a princess said to make powerful deals with those brave enough to find her, and Cressidae has gone to bargain for Teagan’s life. Cressidae has forgotten one very important thing: no one makes it out on their own.

Despite the risks to her own safety, Teagan is determined to save her wife—and perhaps even herself in the process. The princess of the Shadow Realm, however, doesn’t let mortals roam her territories without opposition. In this thrilling fantasy novella, Teagan and Cressidae must face both the horrors of the Shadow Realm as well as their own past.

my review

This should have been…needs to be…a full-length novel instead of a novella. I liked the idea of it. I liked the world. I liked that it’s a retelling. The writing is mechanically sound. But it 100% feels like part of a story, as opposed to a story of its own. It leans heavily on flashbacks to give a lot of what happens context. But the flashbacks just break up the flow of the already too-short work. You barely get to know or care about Teagan and not at all about Cressidae. The villain is villainous until she encounters the smallest push-back. All in all, I suppose I wanted to like this a lot more than I did.

photo the bone way


Other Reviews:

Book Review: The Bone Way

Review: The Bone Way – Holly J. Underhill