"Break the Beast" by Allison Tebo

This book blew me away.  It's got a vibe like Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, but mixed with wonderful wordsmithing ala Caraval by Stephanie Garber, and with a hero who could stand beside any of the great men in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.

And if that sounds hyperbolic, I assure you it is not.  This is going to be one of my top books for the year.

Break the Beast is a retelling of the ancient epic Beowulf, but with a wonderful twist.  Instead of killing the monster Grendel, Beowulf saves her from being a monster.  In this book, Grendel was once a human girl, and when Beowulf offers her a chance to turn from worshiping the Dragon Below and instead worship the Almighty, he's also offering her a chance to reclaim her humanity.

I don't want to spoil the story too much, but this is simultaneously an epic quest to defeat monsters and a very personal story of the power of faith and friendship.  It's an allegory like Till We Have Faces, but it's also an emotion-charged fantasy adventure like The Lord of the Rings.

I also loved that, like Balefire by Deborah Koren, this book centers on a platonic friendship between a man and a woman.  I love books like that where romance doesn't need to be part of the plot just because the two main characters are a guy and a girl.  If this is a new trend, I applaud it!

I had to read this book in little bites most of the time because I needed to savor the exquisite writing and storytelling.  I've enjoyed Allison Tebo's writing for years now, but this is far above everything she's written before.  It is magnificent.  Though there is a little flavor of decision-based theology here and there that I do not personally agree with, just fyi.

Particularly Good Bits:

"You and I both know that when we do not allow the Almighty to erect the walls of his truth around our thoughts, our minds devour us, and then, fools that we are, we blame the Almighty for our pain, and we choose to live in the chaos, instead of seeking freedom in Him (p. 20-21).

As the hours pass, he tries several times to speak to me, but each time, the words fall to the ground with the rain, leaving puddles of awkward silence behind (p. 172).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for mildly gory violence and one instance of someone insinuating a woman has seduced a man (she hasn't).

This is the 15th book I've read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.