OF BEAST AND BEAUTY
by Stacey Jay
Coming 07/23/13
ISBN-13: 978-0375991004
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Pages: 256
Find it on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads
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In the beginning was the darkness, and in the darkness was a girl, and in the girl was a secret. . . .
In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to their worlds.
Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.
As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight returns, she will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.
Ok, this new version of OF BEAST AND BEAUTY has been out for may be a week or more, but I had not been able to locate the larger scale version of it, and I think this book needed to be posted in "all caps". It is such an evocative cover, feeling sci-fi and high fantasy at the same time. Looking at it makes me want to break the barrier and reach into its icy depths.
