Quartzen’s Reviews > Roses in Amber > Status Update

Adding trigger warnings for rape bordering on themes of childhood sexual assault and incest to this, context follows with spoilers. Amber has a vision through the rapist's eyes, a faery who positioned herself as the queen's lover, raised the prince to his teens(?), became obsessed with him, and slept with both in different disguises until the queen sees through her illusion; the faery curses him to become the Beast.

There's an appealing domesticity in many Beauty and the Beast retellings as well as narrative space for art and craft: Amber's perfumes here, Bryony's gardening and the Beast's clockwork in Bryony and Roses, Mirasol's beekeeping in Chalice, frequently of course the great library as well for research or for leisure. The confined setting and small cast removes many other options for plot progression and for conflict.

Moving along. About 10% away from where my e-reader had noticed I'd stopped before. So far, a solid retelling with some secondary world elements that I expect will come more to the fore later.

"He was a monster keeping me against my will, but, his initial rage at my picking the rose having passed, he seemed a rather reasonable captor." This is the make or break point of a Beauty and the Beast story for me; we will see how this one, which I've been enjoying up until now, does.

I'm enjoying this one so far. It's a cozy story and the characters are likable, enough that I am not minding the occasional anachronistic-seeming turn of phrase or logistical quibble. Oddly, there are no chapter breaks, but I haven't missed them so far- the section breaks work just as well.

Positive comparisons to Diane Duane's Tale of the Five series from one reviewer and complaints about "unnecessary bisexuality without a purpose in the story/worldbuidling" from another put this one on my TBR list, and Disney's announcement of a tragic/evil gay character in their new BatB movie inclined me to pick it out of my TBR pile. So far it's interesting, writing is a little flowery but not unsuitably so.