It looks like I'm amazed with anything Aliette de Bodard writes. I couldn't stop reading this book - even though I knew how it would end as a Beauty and the Beast retelling. Set in a dark, diseased post-apocalyptic world this is not only a story where the village's beauty stumbles upon cursed prince and falls in love with a beast, but also story about hope, healing and fixing broken world for the better future.
Also - dragons! I love, love, love tales with dragons and stolen princesses and while Yen is not a princess (but a scholar and a teacher!), with village giving her up as a sacrifice to a dragon it definitely reminds me of that sort of fairy tales. Except there would be no prince, no dragon slayer coming to save her; just like there's no cursed prince with fur and claws, but instead a tough, lonely woman with hard choices to make. And I believe that everyone who knows how the batb goes will know what to expect from Yen and her dragon jailor, because this story is also about love, in all of its form, and romance between two women.