As Old as Time: A Twisted Tale by Liz Braswell

As Old as Time: A Twisted Tale by Liz Braswell

Part of the Twisted Tales series by Liz Braswell 

 

(taken from Amazon.com)

What if Belle's mother cursed the Beast? As Old as Time is the third book in a new YA line that reimagines classic Disney stories in surprising new ways. When Belle touches the Beast's enchanted rose, memories flood through Belle's mind-memories of a mother she thought she would never see again. And, stranger still, she sees that her mother is none other than the beautiful enchantress who cursed the castle and all its inhabitants. Shocked and confused, Belle and the Beast will have to unravel a dark mystery about their families that is 21 years in the making.

With all the hoopla with the new Beauty and the Beast movie coming out, bookstores have in the last year or so been filled with Beauty & the Beast novelizations of various caliber, including this one by Liz Braswell. Braswell has written a whole (sort-of) series of novels modeled after the Disney princess films--but which distinctly diverge from the movies on several counts.

I've read her other two Disney-esque novels (and which are published by Disney Press, btw; an indication of this book being more of a publicity stunt than a quality read--which I stubbornly ignored), because, well, stick something indicative of Disney on the cover and I am one of those suckers who will pick it up and buy it. All of them are similar in that they start out sounding very much like the films they're based on, but they quickly diverge in terms of plot, and often also, in characterization (sometimes not for the better).

I'll post the other two sooner or later, but the Beauty & the Beast one is the most recent, and is likewise most in the forefront of my memory.

I have not seen the new film (comes out Friday--yes, I will DEFINITELY be going to see it), but from listening to the soundtrack (yes, I bought it--go judge me) and reading what I've seen in previews and online, I think it has a backstory similar to what will happen in the film; despite this book being published at the time that the film script was being written. (*Cough* not an accident *cough*).

The story starts out years before, when the initial curse is placed on the Beast, but jumps back and forth between the 'then' and the 'now'. The backstory starts out much more developed than the animated film--the magical people in Belle's village and surrounding kingdom are slowly being persecuted; even and especially, her mother. In the end, her mother is the one who curses the Beast (which the reader discovers early on, but Belle only figures out later). Consequently, when the castle is cursed, the people in the village are enchanted to forget everything about it and the people who lived there. Meanwhile, the man who runs the local asylum, has been locking away enchanted peoples little by little. Belle goes to find her father when he is taken prisoner, and ends up in the Beast's castle, as in the original animated plot, etc. etc.

This was an okay read. For moderate 12-year-old entertainment on a first read, this book moved at a decent pace, and had intriguing connections between the village in the chapters from the past, and Belle's present-day dilemma, which finally converge about 3/4 of the way through the book. The connections are somewhat obvious, but at least they propel the story forward and make you feel like you're cleverer than you are.

I think the characters were poorly done, however. The author gave more time and care to developing some of the townspeople than she did to bringing Belle's character to life in a new way. Belle seemed almost annoying, rather than the confident girl in the animated film. She seemed a bit almost...self-centered, to me, which made it hard for me to relate to any of the characters effectively, or to care what happened to them. I think maybe the problem was that Braswell was trying to find a middle ground between having Belle just fall for the Beast who locked her up (i.e. trying to avoid too much of an endorsement of Stockholm Syndrome), and making sure that, in the end, she DOES come to love the Beast, but in the process, she completely undermined Belle's character, turning her into a whiny, naive girl who's just scared and mistrustful of the Beast, rather than pitying his brokenness.

The other thing that was a little odd about this book was that it seemed, reader-level and target-audience-wise, to be aimed at middle grades or at least at a young YA, but the ending of the book is incredibly dark, dealing with abuse and asylums. I won't say much more, but it does have a dark twist to the story (which the other books in the Twisted Tales series also possess) that makes the ending less adventurous and heart-wrenching, and more just creepy and horror-novel-like. If choosing a book for one of my more innocent sixth graders, I might have seen this on the shelf, and thought, "Oh, yes, they'd probably like that!", but after reading, I wouldn't hand something this dark to a sheltered 11 or 12-year-old.

Overall Rating: 4 / 10 Stars 

Since I couldn't connect with the main protagonist (nor did I care what happened to her), and horror isn't really my cup of tea, this book didn't have a whole lot to offer in the end. It's not one I would care to reread, by any means.