Crimson Bound - Rosamund Hodge

Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge
Published on May 5, 2015 by Balzer + Bray
[This book was provided to me by the Publisher but this in no way affected my opinion.]

When Rachelle was fifteen she was good—apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless— straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat.

Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in an effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand—the man she hates most—Rachelle forces Armand to help her find the legendary sword that might save their world. As the two become unexpected allies, they uncover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic, and a love that may be their undoing. In a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?

Inspired by the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, Crimson Bound is an exhilarating tale of darkness, love, and redemption.

Okay, so I made a huge mistake when entering this book. The first one was to listen to GR saying that this was part of the same world of Cruel Beauty but the second, and bigger one, was to actually enter this specting a Cruel Beauty 2.0 - which means mythology based novel focused mostly on an epic romance, but Crimson Bound there is much more to it and in a lot of ways is much more successful than Cruel Beauty despite not having given me that much emotions.

The first thing that Crimson Bound differs from Cruel Beauty is in it's world, this time around we spend a lot more time building this world on it's mythology and magical aspects but also on the politics of it, seeing how it works (since Rachelle works for the King), this came to me as a very high fantasy aspect and it did slowed the pace of the book - we need time to digest everything that has been happening to this world and understand how Rachelle wants to change it. For me this parts wasn't boring but if you're not a fan of slow paced books you may want to rethink reading this one.

Rachelle is another wonderful main character that Hodge managed to create. She is a bloodbound, which means she was marked by the forest and killed to survive, working for the king on killing creatures that manage to escape of the forest (which is the magical *thing* of this world) and she does that so she feels less guilty of having killed her aunt. I love the internal struggles that Hodge manages to create with all of her characters, Rachelle is torn between guilty and wanting to be good but also wanting to stay alive, and this created a multi layered character that made me care for her story.

About the romance, this is probably the weakest point of the story, I was highly anticipating a great ship but that wasn't what happened. We kind of have a love triangle, I don't know if I would call it that because it's pretty clear that Rachelle only have feelings for one of the parts, the other part is only there to cause unnecessary complication, usually I don't mind love triangles even the ones that are unnecessary but I really, really didn't enjoyed the execution of this one. On one hand we Erec, which is also a bloodbound but on the contrary of Rachelle he loves it, their relationship is made of snark remarks, lust and an obsessive love from Erec's part and I enjoyed their interactions for the most part. What really annoyed me was the main couple, Rachelle and Armand, I started out really enjoying them but they annoyed towards the end because they would kiss and swear love to each other (or close to it) and then something would happen and they would be all like "Oh my god, I thought you didn't wanted me anymore" and on repeat (I swear they "broke up" and "made out" three times during the novel, and they only get together after the halfway point so yeah).

Except for that I really did enjoyed this book, it was slightly unfair my early comparisons of this with Cruel Beauty since this is completely different and a new unique story by it's own right. Oh, also I don't really know why this is a Red Riding Hood retelling (maybe Erec is the big bad wolf?) because it was really loosely their similarities. I would recommend it to lovers of fantasy and mythology, fans of great lyrical writing and strong and layered characters.

Cruel Beauty - Rosamund Hodge

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
Published by Balzer + Bray on January 28, 2014
Pages: 342
Genres: Fantasy, Mythology, Romance

Format: eBook
Source: Purchased

Amazon • The Book Depository • Goodreads 

Graceling meets Beauty and the Beast in this sweeping fantasy about one girl's journey to fulfill her destiny and the monster who gets in her way-by stealing her heart.

Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.

With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle-a shifting maze of magical rooms-enthralls her.

As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.

Me, when I finished this book

Cruel Beauty is set on a fantastical world based on Greek mythology, it's not a Graceling mets Beauty and the Beast, and if go into this expecting the kind of fantasy that there is on Graceling you will be majorly disappointed. This is very slow paced and more of a character study sort of book, put together with mythology and a extremely well thought world building - about the world building/mythology aspect, I fell like I have to tell, a lot of people said it was confusing and overload at times but I never felt like it, it was majorly beautiful, especially at the end when you see it all come together and how well thought & build this whole story was.

Nyx was never a hard character for me to love, she was born and raised to kill the demon that rules her lands, she is the only hope, the savior but she also was raised knowing that this task will likely be her death. It was easy to get from where it came all her jealousy, her hatred - for me, she was the personification of all the thoughts and feelings and the irrational human instinct that we have but keep buried. Ignifex and Shade were harder characters to get, both are being built during the entire story and I think that only on the end we can really get they personality and more of his reasons to be how they are.

Being a book mainly focused on the romance, if you don't enjoy it you will probably not enjoy this story so much. I have to say something, since always I wanted a romance between a main character and the villain - but not the usual YA guy with the dark secret that end up being good, no a real villain and Ignifex, being a demon, definitely fits this category of a villain that doesn't searches a reason for his acts - so that being said I absolutely loved every second of this romance! It feel like at first we would have a little of a love triangle but it didn't happened (also was really pleased how it turned out at the end) and them we had the glorious ship that is Nyx and Ignifex - they are both despicable people and they match so well together, there was one sentence that Nyx said that was something like "he has seem all the ugly parts of me and still is able to love me" and this is what made me ship these two so hard, they knew each other on the worst and still managed to fell in love. Also they have an amazing banter, both of their characters are very witty and ready to give a sharp answer to one another - especially Nyx, always remind him of her desire to kill him, it's weird that I liked their threats to each other so much? Oh, well. And their kissing scenes too, so good. And that almost ending. And them the real ending. I just, too good.

So many feels. Everything was felt with this book. Everything.

This book is basically amazing, I loved every second of it from the first chapter till the last and I know that this book isn't everyone cup of tea but I highly hope that you will give it at least a chance to capture your attention and see if you enjoy it - because I think you will.