Beauty
#6253.85 adjusted 3.87 for sample size in the official ranking · full ranking
Books 1 book Status Complete 1991 Reading commitment Low Sheri S. Tepper Last reviewed 2026-09-05
Overview
Beauty (1991) is a standalone novel by Sheri S. Tepper following Beauty, a young woman descended from the Sleeping Beauty of legend and cursed at birth by a vengeful fairy godmother. Fleeing the sixteenth-birthday curse foretold for her, she is instead abducted forward into a bleak, overpopulated future in which magic, myth, and the natural world have been almost entirely erased by human exploitation, forcing her to travel across time and through multiple realms, encountering figures from other fairy tales along the way, to try to preserve whatever beauty and wildness still survive. The novel blends fairy-tale retelling with environmental and dystopian science fiction, characteristic of Tepper's wider body of work, which frequently combined fantastical premises with pointed ecological and social commentary. It is considered one of Tepper's most acclaimed individual novels and a notable example of literary fairy-tale reworking published in the early 1990s.
Fairy-tale retelling · For Adult
Core Canon: Reading Order (1 work) counts toward ranking
Beauty (1991) core · 3.85 (6,111 ratings); A Sleeping Beauty-descended protagonist cursed at birth is abducted into a dystopian future and travels through time and multiple realms to preserve magic, nature and beauty against ecological destruction. Won the 1992 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel; was also a preliminary nominee for the 1992 Hugo Award for Best Novel and a Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature nominee.
Quick answers
- How many books are in Beauty? Beauty's Core Canon is 1 book.
- Is Beauty finished? Complete (1991).
- How much reading does Beauty take? Low reading commitment (estimated from 1 Core Canon book · ~463 pages).
- How is Beauty ranked? #625 in this site's official ranking, based on 6,111 reader ratings across 1 Core Canon book. See the full ranking for how this is calculated.
Why is it ranked #625?
Ranked #625 in the official ranking.
- Average reader rating of 3.85 across 1 core book.
- A smaller readership (6,111 ratings), so the score carries less weight of numbers.
- Less than 0.01 behind #624, Terras de Corza (a finer tie-break level decides the order).
- Below the top-10 average of 4.45.
- A single standalone novel: ranked on that one book alone.
Why explore this universe?
Rated · 1 book · Complete · 6k ratings · Ranks #625 overall
Good choice if you want a quick, low-commitment fairy-tale retelling fantasy universe that's already finished, so there's no wait for the next book.
Reading order
A single Core Canon work: no sequencing question to resolve.
Awards (verified)
- Locus Award (Best Fantasy Novel), 1992: won: Beauty
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Suggestions computed from what Beauty and each of these worlds have in common on record (subgenre, audience, shape, reading commitment and score), not a documented narrative connection.
- The Book of Atrix Wolfe Epic fantasy / Fairy-tale retelling · Complete · Low commitment · 3.99
- The Adventures of Mary Darling Fairy-tale retelling · Complete · Low commitment · 3.97
- Deerskin Fairy-tale retelling / Dark fantasy · Complete · Low commitment · 3.94
- The River Has Roots Fairy-tale retelling / Mythic fantasy · Complete · Low commitment · 3.94
Official resources
Research details
Ranking metrics: weighted average 3.85 across 6,111 ratings on 1 Core Canon book. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.
How do we know this?
Admission: Beauty (Sheri S. Tepper) accepted 2026-09-05
Sources: (see source tier definitions)
Last reviewed: 2026-09-05
Rule: Registers as a single-work Core Canon universe; Tepper wrote no other novel set in this same continuity.