Yelena is a laundress, evicted from her village and forced to fend for herself in the rot-infested forest. Yelen is a forgotten tyrant, cursed into a chimeric bear-like form, and desperately trying to distance himself from the man he once was.
When Yelena discovers Yelen in his enchanted castle, she discovers a kindred spirit in the aromantic, bi-attracted monster, and their relationship quickly escalates. But being a guest in a cursed castle with a lonely, amorous Beast is not all fun and games – while exploring, Yelena makes a disturbing discovery about the source of the rot, and starts showing symptoms of infection herself.
Can Yelen and Yelena work together to find a lasting cure for the rot seeping beyond the castle walls, or will the curse claim another victim?
YELEN & YELENA is an atmospheric, slow-burn Gothic Dark Fantasy with aromantic and bi characters, for fans of T. Kingfisher’s What Moves The Dead, Hannah Rose Jones’ The Language of Roses and Naomi Novik’s Uprooted. It is for adult readers who like mild-to-moderately spicy monster-fucking stories that explore complex relationships, self-discovery, and the power of found family in the face of darkness and adversity.
Content Notes:
Reader discretion is advised: this book deals with themes of death (loss, grief, murder, suicide, self-sacrifice, and the afterlife), community (its construction, reconstruction, and destruction), family (loss of family, found family, chosen family), possession, loss of agency and autonomy, and mental health issues such as suicide ideation, depersonalisation, derealisation, and depression. There is also civil unrest, lynching of landlords, and the appearance of soldiers and militia.
Yes, this is a Beauty and the Beast retelling, but it is a genuinely refreshing one. For one, it is emphatically not a love story. Both Yelena and the beast, Yelen, are aromantic. They lust plenty, but their love is strictly platonic. We witness sincere affection blossom, but it’s the affection of dear friends. That may be enough to put some readers off, but if you’re happy with no-strings attached smut, you will not be disappointed. This is one for the monsterfuckers, emphasis on fuck. It gets weird, it gets dangerous, and it is utterly unapologetic about it.
Dai Baddley – Divination Hollow Review
Read the full Divination Hollow Review here, or here as PDF.
Audio Release
mp3 files are available to download and keep from Ko-Fi, and the complete audiobook will also be available on Itch.
Serial audio released weekly from 19 February 2025 on the Eldritch Girl podcast, every Wednesday, with bonus eps every Saturday. Support my podcast on Ko-Fi.
About the Gothick Fantasia Series
This series will be set in the universe of YELEN & YELENA, but at different times, and different settings. All the novels and novellas will be standalones, and retellings/reimaginings of different fairy tales, folk tales, and public domain works, like classic Gothic Horror texts.
Some of the stories will have crossover characters, or be linked by place or time. You will be able to pick them up in any order.
On timelines: YELEN & YELENA takes place in a very rural setting, somewhere in the magical equivalent of the Industrial Revolution in Britain and France (1800s). Yelen was therefore cursed roughly around their equivalent of our seventeenth century (1600s).
Coming Soon
AS BELOW, SO ABOVE – m/m Rapunzel meets Phantom of the Opera (but alchemists), set in an alchemist’s tower and inspired by the principles of Spiritual Alchemy as well as alchemy as a protoscience. It also has the vague vibes of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. This takes place a few years before the events of YELEN & YELENA, and is linked by a background character, but set in a different part of the country, not far from the Interior City.
COLD AS SNOW, WHITE AS BONE – Snow White meets Fall of the House of Usher, but with bisexuals, heavily inspired by the Belarusan (Soviet) film, The Savage Hunt of King Stakh, now restored for BluRay by Deaf Crocodile. This takes place about 200 years before the events of YELEN & YELENA, with some little hints that it’s around the time Yelen was cursed (so in their magical 1600s equivalent period, with a decadent but post-plague aesthetic), but it is set in a slightly different part of the country – the Fens.
I’m having a lot of fun coming up with new concepts for this loose series.
Watch this space for more.
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