Strange Horizons, July 21, 2014

“Witch, Beast, Saint: an Erotic Fairy Tale” by C.S.E. Cooney

Reviewed by Louis West

“Witch, Beast, Saint: an Erotic Fairy Tale,” by C.S.E. Cooney, is... erotic. The witch finds a beast dying in the woods and compels him to come with her. She makes him her familiar and eventually her lover. Sometime later a warlock saint arrives and rudely steals the beast from her, transforming the beast back into the man he’d once been. But neither man nor saint remain happy with the results and, one by one, they return. How the witch deals with her feelings, her lust and her emotional needs become deliciously complicated.

A fun read lathered with sex of all kinds–erotic without being crude–although I didn’t discover any deep, soul-searching point to the tale other than to be really careful when you piss off a witch. Recommended escapist reading.