Sarah's Reviews > The Fairest Beauty

Seventeen-year-old Sophie is a scullery maid for the cruel, vain Duchess of Hohendorf. The Duchess enjoys sadistically punishing everyone who crosses her path, but saves a special hatred for Sophie, for the girl is strikingly pretty and the Duchess envies her.

Meanwhile, in the nearby fiefdom of Hagenheim, the Duke’s family has taken in an elderly woman on Death’s door. The old servant, Pinnosa, tells the Duke and his two sons, with her dying breath, that Sophie, daughter of the late Duke of Hohendorf, still lives.

Sophie matters to the Hagenheim family because she was the betrothed of Valten, Hagenheim’s heir. The betrothal took place when she was an infant and he was five. Two years later, Sophie was apparently dead of one of the many fatal illnesses that cycled through medieval Europe.

Valten isn’t sure whether to believe Pinnosa’s story. He’s vaguely curious, but can’t go to Hohendorf anyway because he just broke his leg in a jousting accident. His younger brother Gabe, who’s something of a wild child, thinks that this lead is too interesting to delay investigating. He defies his parents and rides to Hohendorf, (badly) disguised as a pilgrim, to search for his brother’s betrothed.

And he finds her—a pretty and genteel lass, who endures the obsessive sneering of the Duchess and the invasive advances of the fiefdom’s huntsman, Lorencz. Sophie can also read, an extremely rare trait in scullery maids but a common one in aristocrats. To the surprise of exactly no one (except Sophie, who has no self-esteem) Gabe starts falling for the girl himself.

The Duchess panics, realizing that the handsome and silly young man who just rode into her territory is probably a Hagenheim agent here to rescue Sophie. So she imprisons him in her dungeon while sending Lorencz to drag the girl into the forest and kill her. Gabe escapes, and Lorencz is unable to finish the dreadful deed demanded of him. Sophie and Gabe find each other, but now they’re lost in the wilderness, with a murderous duchess sending agents to kill them, no food or medical supplies, and no quick, safe way to Hagenheim…

Content Advisory
Violence: Lorencz slams Sophie’s head against a tree to knock her cold, and tries to stab her but decides against it. Gabe and Sophie both get wounded with arrows; his injury becomes infected and needs several weeks’ tending. (view spoiler)[ The Duchess stabs Sophie in the heart, but the knife gets caught in the wooden cross pendant the girl always wears under her clothing, and she survives. The Duchess falls into a brook and is drowned by her heavy clothing while fleeing the scene of the crime. (hide spoiler)]

Sex: Lorencz hits on the naïve Sophie in a way that makes her decidedly uncomfortable, even forcing a kiss on her once. She’s more amenable to the advances of Gabe, since he at least appears to be pious, and is certainly nicer than Lorencz. But Gabe also breaks the rules of polite behavior in those days, kissing his brother’s fiancée a few times. Sophie immediately likes Gabe back, but feels uncomfortable about their relationship until the engagement to Valten is formally sundered. Another servant girl brags about having sex with Lorencz, and it’s unclear to what degree she was exaggerating or making things up.

Language: Nothing.

Substance Abuse: Nothing.

Politics and Religion: There are a LOT of references to Jesus, using language that can’t be traced further back than the American revival movements of the nineteenth century. That said, there are actual traces of medieval Catholicism in this story, making it a huge improvement on the first book in the series.

Conclusions
The Fairest Beauty is a sequel to The Healer’s Apprentice, featuring the children of Wilhelm and Rose from that book in young adulthood, and it’s a marked improvement on the earlier installment in the series.

Sophie, while still a bit overscrupulous and too quiet, is actually somewhat proactive. She takes measures (such as carrying a hidden dagger) to protect herself, and is capable of lying or misleading if she can save her friends or herself that way. The “I can’t love him because he’s betrothed to another” plot is repeated from Healer’s Apprentice, but this actually works in Dickerson’s favor, showing that she’s rectified many of the initial flaws in the series. Sophie shares Rose’s virtues but is actually portrayed as a human.

Gabe takes a lot more after his indolent uncle Rupert than his uptight father, and that’s mostly a good thing. He’s an attention-hungry rascal, but he admits this much about himself and asks Sophie (and by proxy, the reader) to be patient with him and love him in spite of that. Sometimes he overestimates his own charm, but plenty of lovable antiheroes before him have done the same.



Gabe's not as cool as Hawkeye Pierce, granted, but who is? I still like him very much.

The Duchess doesn’t bring anything new to the table as far as “interpretations of the Evil Queen from Snow White” goes, and her motivation is never given the airtime it needs. But unlike Moncore from the first book, she is true to her archetype, has a motive that at least sort-of makes sense, and is not prone to histrionics and demon-summoning. That’s all win. I thought her death sequence was drawn out past the point of best dramatic effect, but that’s a matter of subjective taste. She’s a perfectly serviceable villain.

This time around, you can actually tell what fairytale the story is based on. Some of the symbols—especially the apple—are forced in way too hard, and it’s unclear to me how the Duchess disguised herself as an old beggar since there’s no magic in this universe. But I really did like the portrayal of the “Seven Dwarves” who in this version are a diverse crew of outcasts from medieval society. They were sweet guys, and I hope to see more of them in the series.

I’m also curious about the development of Valten and his sister Margaretha, who apparently get main character duties in The Captive Maiden and The Princess Spy.

So while I had a lot of problems with the first book in this series, it’s improved a lot since then, and I’m glad I gave it another shot. My complete review of The Healer’s Apprentice will be up soon. Looking forward to the rest of the books in this series.