Thursday, December 9, 2021

"Rust and Rose" by Annemieke Liu

Kindle Vella cover for "Rust and Rose" by Annemieke Liu

Current Tags

fairy tale retelling, beauty and the beast, queer fairy tale, asian fantasy, bisexual protagonist, chinese american, ya contemporary fantasy

Categories

Fantasy / LGBT Fiction

Affiliate Link


Author's Description

~BEAUTY & THE BEAST, but make it queer and Asian American~ To save her family from financial ruin, Mei vows to study for a year with a metal-faced sorcerer -- but her vow entangles her in his curse, a curse that will steal her freedom, sorcery, and love. Mei is certain she can earn her sorcerer's degree and end the curse, and maybe even fall in love along the way. But her task gets more complex as three trials push her sorcery to the limit, and she realizes she's falling for the wrong person...

Why I Chose it

This is the second Beauty & the Beast retelling I've highlighted on the blog, but it's very different from the first — instead of a secondary world fantasy, this has more of a modern day feel to it: the main character is flying to Tokyo to visit her father when things go sideways.

I know I said before I wasn't a fan of fairy tale retellings, but I think I should modify my statement. This feels different enough that I would not have noticed it was retelling Beauty & the Beast if it hadn't said so in the description.

[48 episodes so far, with 8 updates in the last 30 days.]

Who Might Like This

Contemporary fantasy fans should check this out!

Unrelated Griping

I know I mention this a lot, but you would be shocked at the percentage of stories on Vella that are either 1) a wall of text with no paragraph breaks at all, or 2) a wall of white space with every sentence given its own paragraph.

I don't get it. It's really not that hard.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Welcome!

Who am I?  Hi! I'm SF/F author T.M. Baumgartner. I also publish cozy mysteries as Tess Baytree. People who know me in real life call me ...