The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey

Lackey's story of a young turn of the century female who is brought to the wilds of San Francisco to read books for a reclusive alchemist recreates the fable of the monster who wins the heart of a young woman yet forbids her to view him. For the monster here is a magician caught in a werewolf spell, and the young girl is a destitute young woman with no other choices. A retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

An interesting Beauty and the Beast retelling. A fun read. I really like Rosalind and Master Pao. Simon and Paul are despicable, but not very interesting, villains.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. The story began slowly, and the description sometimes got in the way of the plot, I felt. At its heart, this is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. We have the beast, Jason Cameron, a elemental wizard who got too big for his britches and tried a spell he didn't know how to uncast. We have the beauty, an heiress who was working on her PhD when her father died and left her penniless.

Though the story moved slowly, I kept reading it because I loved Rosalind, the heroine. She doesn't know her own beauty, relies on her glasses to see anything, and is much smarter than she already looks. She is intrepid, clever, insightful, and sensitive. She's also bossy, which I love.

A decent retelling of a familiar and well-loved fairy tale, I wish there had been a little less world-building and a little more relationship-building.

Mercedes Lackey is readable. And that's about all I can say about her. Not sure where the climax is. One of the main characters spent a lot of time searching for a cure for his curse. He finds it, then decides he doesn't need it & lets it be destroyed!? I feel like it makes most of the book pointless. This author excels at weak plot resolutions. I fail to see how she is an award winning author.