“That is my wish. To be able to touch you, and feel your warmth, and to have my heart beat in rhythm with yours, that is truly important to me. And I cannot have it or offer it to you in turn. So I will settle for your soul and spirit, as I hope you will settle for mine. And that is something credits cannot buy.”
Astrid & Vasily Petrov are the beauty & the beast couple I didn’t know I needed. Just as the title implies, this novella follows the sci-fi retelling of this classic fairytale where the beast is a cyborg (quite literally a soul trapped in a machine, although I won’t spoil how all of that works as the author has done quite an excellent job with her world-building) and the beauty is just that: a beautiful girl who agrees to a contract to save her family.
If you’re a fan of the fake marriage trope, I think you’ll enjoy this story as the contract aforementioned is literally an agreement for Astrid to marry Vasily in exchange for enough credits to save her dying family. But as expected, their relationship turns out to be far more real than either of them expected possible. There’s also a hilariously romantic sentient AI (which gives me all the Iko vibes if you’re familiar with Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles) that does everything within her power to get these two together.
The only complaint I have about this story is that I wanted more! It’s a quick read since it’s a novella, but I could have kept right on reading in this incredible world that Seibert created. I particularly loved her style of using what I would call “literary” or “formal” language for a sci-fi book; it really lent itself well to the personalities of the two characters, particularly Vasily.
If you’re looking for a relaxing read that transports you across the galaxy, then I highly recommend Beauty & the Cyborg by Jodie Seibert.
Kathleen Bird 