Hello & welcome back to our Mermaid event here on A Look at Disney and oof, today's review is a rough one. A couple years ago during a batch of Halloween reviews, I looked at the book, Fairest of Them All: A Tale of the Wicked Queen by Serena Valentino and I said it was fine but alas, that is not the case with this book. This book was just so infuriating, maybe because I like Ursula but this book answered questions that no one was asking.
Author
Serena Valentino
I am a not a fan of this book in the slightest but Valentino does do a commendable job of writing a Young Adult novel that other people might enjoy that fleshes out characters.
The Plot
Does anyone really care about the plot to this book? Well, if you do, this ad sums it up.
And really, that's the big shtick is that it explores a "why" that I don't think a lot of people had asked, be it what was The Queen like before she became The Wicked Queen, what The Prince like before he became the Beast, why was Ursula consumed with so much hatred. Which brings us to another element that seems to have popped in Valentino's works. There is always someone that is usually related to the main character that hates them. In Fairest of Them All, The Queen is hated by her father, in her Maleficent book, Maleficent is adopted by a fairy named Nanny, whose sister is The Fairy Godmother (yes, the one from Cinderella) hates Maleficent and in this book and hated by Fairy Godmother, Ursula is hated by her brother, King Triton. Okay okay, I can appreciate the idea of Triton and Ursula being brother and sister as it was a dropped idea from the movie but we are now entering an area that I've talked about years before known as adaptional villainy. For a refresher...
Villains who are either not evil in their original source material or are more vile than what they are in their original versions.
And the more vile aspect is what we got with Triton as he was depicted in this book, as Valentino decided to ramp his hatred of humans up to 11 and display him as a tyrannical ruler that had always hated humans. Oh yeah, this is really good. As you see when Triton found his sister after she called upon the Sea Gods after her adopted father who had raised her amongst humans brought her back to Atlantica and refused her to let her appear in her natural form and was shunned by her brother. And the only one to ever show her kindness was Triton's wife And that is part of the reason why Ursula almost almost regrets making the deal with Ariel as she looks like her mother. Which was conveyed in a baffling chapter that was an adaption of Ursula's famous song. Oh, and let's not forget that Ursula nearly has a breakdown after Triton calls her vile and ugly. Uhm...
Really, Disney's biggest diva would not break down over someone calling her vile or ugly. Plus, she's not ugly. Vile sure but my point is that Ursula would own Triton and hand his fin to him for a comment like that.
Oh, that's just part of my issue with this book as this is the third in the original trilogy of books and Valentino has these really annoying witch characters known as The Odd Sisters that appear in all the books and this book takes place after the events that transpired in the Beast book and apparently, their younger sister had gone missing and part of the book is taken up with them trying to find her. And I gotta be honest and say that I did not care about these characters in the slightest and they ended up taking me out of the story. But quite honestly, that was not my biggest issue with this book. For a book that is sold on being about Ursula. This book spends a lot of time teasing Maleficent and her story, which was the next book after this one. But book, I didn't pick this up to read about Maleficent, I picked this book up from my local library because I like Ursula and there may be fans of The Little Mermaid that don't care about Maleficent or haven't read any of the other books in this series. Not really a stretch considering that Oh My Disney is heavily promoting the next book to Tangled fans as it's about Mother Gothel.
Yeah, I didn't like this book. I will say that I do like that it did end with Ursula still being evil and dying but according to this book, Valentino's witches had a hand as they cast a spell that helped Eric in killing Ursula. Ugh, really? She didn't even have a great death, to begin with, and you want to take one of the few cool aspects away from it.
Characters
Ursula
Ursula felt like Ursula at times, when she was in the book. Which wasn't a whole lot but she was one of the few bright spots of the book. It's rather similar to a complaint that I've brought up on Trotting Through Life in how Pinkie Pie can have a bad episode but still be the bright spot. That's the case here for as bad this book was, Ursula was enjoyable to read with her treachery.
The Odd Sisters
I do not care about these characters in the slightest. Great, they came to Ursula for help in finding their sister. Whoopie.
Triton
This book took Triton's hatred of humans a step too far and missed the point that he hated humans because of his loss of his wife at the hands of humans. Oh and book, don't even try to act like him turning Ariel human was a self-imposed punishment that he had to endure. Yes, it was hard for him to do that but he saw happy it made Ariel and that is why he was willing to do it because of his love for his daughter. not to atone for past mistakes. Sure, that might have been part of it but that was not the driving force behind that decision.
My Final Thoughts
I think I've made it pretty clear that I don't like this book. It just frustrates me as someone that really likes Ursula and the movie that she came from. I don't know of any TLM fan that was asking what was Ursula like before the events of the movie and why did she act the way she did in the movie. The second one can be answered pretty easily, she's the villian. You might think that I wouldn't pick up another of these books but oh just wait as on Halloween, I'll be doing a review of her next book about Mother Gothel. That should be fun, in the meantime, join me next time as we look at songs sung by Ariel.
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