Truth in the Dark

I'm going to go right out and say it:
This is my favorite Amy Lane book. Hands down.
It is the work of a master.
I got chills while reading it, honest-to-goodness chills running up and down my arms. I started this book right before going to the gym tonight and worked out half-heartedly in a daze. My mind was fully entranced in the world that Amy Lane created. After working out (maybe??), I read this book in my freezing cold car, not wanting to put it down to drive the three blocks to my house, knowing that I would try to read as I drove and not wishing to die just then.
The story was just that beautiful.
Honestly, I was expecting this to be great. I love Amy Lane when she writes her fairytale-like stories and I knew that this was going to work for me right from the start. What I didn't expect was it to be so amusingly snarky. Naef was such a beautiful character for me. Damaged, snarly, and untrusting, Naef protects himself with an arsenal of metaphorical and actual mini-knives that he caries in his pocket. His isn't afraid to throw his knives at anyone who he deems threatening. To see his relationship with Aerie-Smith develop slowly and tentatively was magical. They had this deep connection that felt so real it was palpable for me.
I refuse, refuse, to give away any spoilers about this book. I was so contained when I read this story, so amazed that I made it through this emotional journey without crying that I was completely blindsided near the end by one of the sweetest and most tender scenes that I have ever read. Then the tears started.
This book shined above and beyond all of the books that I have read recently.

Well done! Genuinely affecting, and I like that the protagonist isn't magically cured of his bitterness at the end of the story, he's just getting better and we presume will continue to.

STUNNING!
As a story model for romance, Eros and Psyche is hard to beat. There's a reason that Beauty & the Beast succeeds so completely when it's presented in a new incarnation whether its Cocteau or Disney.
First things first, Amy Lane is a haunting, subtle, skilled writer who refuses to settle for easy solutions. Every book she's written carries pain and secrecy thumping inside its ribs like a dark heart. Faced with the \"update a fairytale\" challenge, she's not going to settle for a facile approach.
Knife, the protagionist, is the direct converse of what most writers would tackle. He is literally deformed, arguably ugly, but fiercely appealing for reasons that aren't easy to explain. Aerie-Smith is beastly in stark, upsetting ways; if he is sexy and commanding, those things are handicaps as much as strengths. There are no quick fixes on offer here. Yet it IS a fairytale, and Lane walks her Knife's edge to wring delicious sweetness and sadness out of a very old story.
Lane also digs right at the core of the original Myth. She knows her Ovid and (I'd imagine) many many versions of this story as well. What she has used to built her plot, the curse, the romance IS the hub of the myth itself: the act of seeing, the power and peril of secrecy and sight, the trust it takes to expose ugliness in yourself and others, the painful struggle between Truth and Darkness.
I don't like spoilers in reviews, so I won't ruin any of the witty twists she puts on her kingdoms or their quirky inhabitants. I'm not going to crow about her dynamic prose and her singular characterizations and her knack for odd emotion from unexpected sources, because you'll either see them instantly or think I'm an ass for raising your hopes. And I will only hint at the slivers of heartbreak and hope that she plants at strange moments. I will assure you that it is a fairytale with a happy ending, but one that comes with a keen sense of the cost of happiness and endings.
I loved this retelling, and I'm even more of a fan of Amy Lane than I was going in, which is saying something. She is a treasure.