Este es el diario de Bella, hija del duque de Westfaire, nacida en el siglo XIV y condenada por una maldición a dormir cien años...
En esta ocasión, sin embargo, Bella viaja en el tiempo hasta el siglo XXI para descubrir que éste puede ser el último siglo de la humanidad. Refugiada en el siglo XX, es violada. Cuando regresa a su época, nace su hija, visita a su madre en el País de las Hadas y viaja a otros lugares mágicos como Chimanga, otro país fruto de la imaginación humana. Además de ser la Bella Durmiente y enfrentarse al Señor Oscuro, en su agitado deambular por el mundo y el tiempo, Bella descubre las raíces de otros cuentos y de otras historias míticas.

I don't even know what to say about this. The story is certainly an interesting take on Sleeping Beauty, with some Cinderella and Snow White thrown in. Time travel, fairies, imaginary worlds, etc., all sounds super awesome but the execution was uneven. The story was strongest when Beauty was in her own time and weakest when she was in the 21st century or thinking about the 21st century. It got almost unbearably preachy when Beauty is philosophizing about how ugly and gross and horrible the future (present) is. Yes, this is partly true, and the future (present) that Tepper paints sounds weirdly plausible, but good grief, what a heavy-handed application. If I want to get preached at, I'll go to church or the Republican National Convention.

The story being told as a series of journal entries is a fun conceit, but wasn't convincingly done. And the interjections by Carabosse (Beauty's fairy godmother or something like) were really annoying and didn't really help to illuminate the story at all.

I'll try another by Tepper but probably not for awhile. ( )

This book was really weird. The mixture of fairy tales had potential, but overall it felt chaotic and messy. ( )

I didn't like this book at all.

I thought the protagonist too passive, the world too inconsistent and confusing and the theology misplaced. The latter may have been intended by the author, but I did not want it in the book I wanted to read.

This book and I will probably never be friends. ( )

Except for her usual humour and irony, this is a classical faery tale with a play, time travel, Cinderella...
the end is much more interesting, because of the defense of beauty against human hubris! but still i don't feel it's agreat book, just a nice one. ( )