Book Review: The Beast Within by Serena Valentino

Halloween is over but I still have Disney Villains on my mind. Mostly because I started reading Serena Valentino’s Disney Villain series earlier this week. Her first book, Fairest of All: A Tale of the Wicked Queen, was written in 2009 and explores the world of the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. More recent titles in this young adult series shed light on the mischievous lives of Ursula and Maleficent. For this particular post, I’m focusing on The Beast Within: A Tale of Beauty’s Prince.

Let’s get the weird part over right from the start. Do we consider the Beast in Beauty and the Beast a villain?

I’m not so sure. It’s true that the Beast was originally cast under a spell because he was selfish and mean. He also threw Belle’s father into a dungeon just for running onto the Beast’s property to escape a pack of wolves. Cold and heartless, yes.  Bad enough to be a traditional Disney villain? Wouldn’t Gaston be a better pick?

Valentino’s titles remind me of those word association questions from standardized tests as a kid. “Which word doesn’t belong with the rest?” the question might read, with your choices being: Evil Queen, Ursula, Maleficent, Beast. See what I mean? He needs his own category.

Assuming you can look past this oddity, there’s a lot to like about Valentino’s book. For one, I love the compact size. It makes it easy to carry, fun to read and somehow more appropriate for absorbing the fairy tale held within its pages. I also appreciated the quick pace of the story and the very readable text. There’s not a lot of literary frills here, but the writing style is crisp and sufficient and easily held my interest even though I’m way past the targeted age group. I also enjoyed the references to characters of other Disney stories. (The Beast and Prince Charming know each other!) Plus, I tend to be a fan of any opportunity to revisit a classic Disney tale.

That last part gets tricky, since it’s difficult to expand upon a Disney favorite like Beauty and the Beast without damaging the original story’s charm.  (Or upsetting millions of Disney fans!) Valentino treads this path fairly carefully. The basic components of the plot, as depicted in the original 1991 animated film, remain the same. Some of the classic scenes from the movie, such as the Beast sharing his library with Belle, are included in the book just like they are in the film. Overall though, the author chooses to focus less attention on the relationship of Belle and the Beast and more on other areas.

Valentino introduces several new characters in The Beast Within. She uses these characters to fill in gaps from the original story line and add a little more depth. It’s similar to this year’s live-action Beauty and the Beast in this respect. Although rather than spending time on Belle’s mother and the backgrounds of the townspeople like the new film did, Valentino chooses to focus her book on the prince himself and those responsible for casting the spell.

According to Valentino’s version of the story, a team of witches afflicted the curse on the prince, rather than a lone enchantress.  The author spends a considerable number of pages covering these characters, which are a carryover from Fairest of Them All. She also focuses the bulk of the book on the prince himself before he officially becomes the Beast. Valentino dives into the Beast’s personal life, including flashbacks to his childhood. She also takes liberty with the timing of the story, in terms of the Beast’s age and the amount of time the curse is in effect. I won’t reveal the details here, but some die-hard fans of the original film could be disappointed with some of these variations.

While I enjoyed learning about the prince, I was a little surprised at how much the author chose to leave out of her book. For one, we don’t learn much more about why the prince was cursed in the first place. The reason given felt a little contrived, almost like he was set-up by the witches for previous unnamed grievances. We also don’t hear much about the servants in the castle and how the curse affected them. As mentioned previously, the book also doesn’t spend a lot of time on Belle. It reads like the author assumed you already knew everything about the original story and added just enough references to let you know how her new story connects to it. The end of the book, in particular, felt rushed and not as well crafted as previous chapters.

Despite these observations, I mostly enjoyed Valentino’s The Beast Within.  It’s a quick and interesting read and definitely entertaining enough to read more in the series. Like the newer Beauty and the Beast film though, it mostly made me want to watch the original again. In fact, I think I’ll go do that right now.

Create your own tale as old as time and add a little magic to your world!