Welcome back to Magic Monday at The Real World According To Sam!
Today we will be talking about a re-telling of Disney's Aladdin published by Disney-Hyperion. This is the first book in the Twisted Tales series that re-imagines Disney stories as we know them from the movies by asking one big question: What if? What if one key part about the story changed? What would happen to the rest of the story?
Let's get one jump ahead!
A Whole New World
Author: Liz Braswell
Genre: YA Fantasy Retelling
Year: 2015
Synopsis
What if Aladdin had never found the lamp?
Aladdin is a Street Rat. Like most, he's just trying to survive another day in impoverished Agrabah.
Jasmine is a princess, one who is about to enter into an arranged marriage. All she wants is to escape her fate, to see what lies beyond the palace walls.
But everything changes when the sultan's trusted adviser, Jafar, suddenly rises to power. With the help of an ancient lamp, Jafar attempts to break the laws of magic and gain control over love and death. Soon Aladdin and the deposed princess Jasmine must unite the people of Agrabah in rebellion to stop the power-mad ruler threatening to tear the kingdom apart.
This isn't the story you already know. This is a story about power. About revolutionaries. About love. And about one moment changing everything.
Review
As the synopsis says, this isn't the story you already know. It starts simply and familiarly enough, but by the 1/3rd or 1/4th mark, it takes an entirely different trajectory. Aladdin and Jasmine still meet pretty much the same way. We get a little more insight into the streets and Aladdin's background initially. Abu is still Aladdin's pet monkey. Aladdin still gets arrested and Jafar still plans on having Aladdin being his gateway to the lamp in the Cave of Wonders. Instead of Abu being able to steal the lamp and Aladdin having it when the Cave of Wonders closes up, Aladdin is stuck inside, and Jafar is home free, WITH the lamp. After that point, everything goes completely different. It isn't what if Aladdin never FOUND the lamp, but what if Aladdin wasn't the first to RUB the lamp. He still "found" it in the cave and brought it to Jafar, but this time, Jafar took full possession of it.
I've been seeing this series for a little while now and I've been curious about it, but I hadn't had the chance to read it yet. I finally read this one and I'm not quite sure WHAT to think about it, to be fully honest. It begins going the route of the live action movie for a moment, addressing things like character past, but then once Jafar starts his hostile takeover bid, things just go crazy. He still wants to marry Jasmine, but this time he has power way sooner and he's much more murderous. He takes over the sultan's palace ENTIRELY and....well, some characters don't make it out of this book alive, to be fully honest. When they say "twisted" tale, they mean it. This went pretty dark and I was surprised. Jafar starts using magic and becomes a dictator. He acts like he is helping the people where the former rulers failed, but it quickly turns bad. Eventually, he is trying to raise an army of the undead, and he actually succeeds. They call them ghouls, but they're basically zombies, with some slight differences. They can be killed, they do have very slight memory of who they once were, but they are beyond self-control for the most part. Jafar imposes curfews and tries to sign people to loyalty using food, which people need.
Jasmine is a much stronger character in this story in general than what she has been in either film version of the story. She not only wants to have love and make her own decisions or see the world. She rejects her old life that Jafar usurped and becomes a rebel leader. With the help of Aladdin and a gang of thieves known as the Street Rats, she leads the people of Agrabah against Jafar and his evil forces. That's the basic story in a nutshell. There is a lot more detail in it and with the way it started out, you really don't know if it will end good or bad for anyone. Some characters have completely different histories, such as the Genie. He serves as a comparison point for what Jafar is doing and becoming, as well as a means of knowing how magic really works in this world and what the price of using it can be if you go too far.
I wasn't crazy about this book, but I did find it interesting. I don't think that this book is for every Disney fan, or every Aladdin fan. If you're into mild horror or rebellion type dystopia stories, this might be more up your alley. I can imagine that a lot of big fans of Aladdin would not enjoy this book very much, but I can see where other fans who just want more stories and different angles might really enjoy it. I like the concept and to a certain extent I did like the story. I just didn't come into it expecting it to be so dark, so fast. It honestly put me in a bit of a spin and left me with my mouth dropped open. There are some passages in here, that really aren't for kids. There's definitely some violence and even I was like "WHOA, what?" at some points in it.
I did like the expansion on the characters' backgrounds and I liked having an alternate story that dives more into Agrabah and its people. I really liked the action scenes because I am really into adventure and action. I think the interesting thing is that at some points, this story reminds me a lot of a kind of Prince of Persia story and less of a "Disney" story in the traditional sense (yes, I know the movie based on Prince of Persia was made by Disney, I enjoy it a lot, personally). Prince of Persia has a similar setting, but with more war and more political strife than the animated film, Aladdin. It has Hassansins and battles. If you take the violence and political strife, pair it with some zombies/ghouls, and put it in Agrabah, that is basically what this book is like. It also feels like it is trying to see just how far it can push each character while still maintaining their core personality. Where exactly does each character draw the moral line? How far is each willing to go for their personal motivations or to take revenge for wrongs done to them? What sacrifices are they willing to make and if they had to fight, what would they be fighting for? These are some powerful questions to ask and its really just a very different vein than what is usually offered to Disney fans in stories.
Super quick, let's talk about this cover. It has been a little while since I discussed a cover and I want to talk about this one. I love what they did with it. It reads "Disney" as far as iconic images, but it stays kind of mysterious and veiled, which is probably why I didn't expect the twist to be done the way it was. It does have a kind of eerie thing going on with Jafar's silhouette, but villains and eerie vibes go together and it didn't arouse much suspicion to me. I like the shade of purple they went with and I like that they chose to use the silhouette of Agrabah's buildings. It is an iconic style and within the realm of Disney films and settings, it is distinctive and easy to pick out. I really like this cover and I honestly think that the beauty of it really hid the unexpected content well. If they wanted to shock their fanbase and throw them for a loop, this was definitely the sneakiest way to do it, visually speaking.
Overall, I did enjoy this story. It is very different and I definitely don't recommend it to everyone and certainly not to every Disney fan. I also would not suggest handing this to a smaller kid, as its moreso directed to teens and up. Moving forward, I feel like I could enjoy the series more since I know now what they mean when they say "Twisted Tale." It isn't as simple as one thing changes and the heroes take a simple new path. Things can get out of hand and dark before they get better. I wasn't prepared for that so it jolted my reading a bit at times. Awareness ahead of time will probably make a big difference for me. If you're a Disney purist, and you haven't been a fan of any of the remade movies, there is a very high chance that you won't like this book. Personally though, I thought it was a good story, even if darker, so I give it a Lone Star rating of ✯✯✯. I probably won't re-read it any time soon, and I don't feel the need to rush out and buy it, but I'm glad I read it and will try to keep reading more books in the series.
This concludes another review at The Real World According To Sam, where I bring the books to your screen and even put in my own two cents on them. Thanks for reading!
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