Aladdin Central Messageboard

[Meesh]

I forget if there is already a thread for this, but I just started "Twisted Tales: A Whole New World" by Liz Braswell. I'm about a chapter and a half in and really enjoying it. Anybody else read it?
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[AladdinsGenie]

No, but let me know how it goes because I keep seeing that book around and haven't been able to get any kind of read on what it actually is about.

[Meesh]

I'm pretty far into the audiobook version on Audible.

The first few chapters are pretty much verbatim the movie, with some added backstory and between-scenes. Then at the Cave of Wonders scene, Jafar gets away with the lamp, and it turns into Christopher Nolan's Aladdin It's a gritty/dark/realist dystopia where Jafar gets the lamp and becomes a super-evil mad sorcerer and sultan, and Aladdin and Jasmine team up with the citizens of Agrabah to reclaim the city.

Happy to elaborate and/or give opinions when I'm done, but I don't want to spoil anything if you decide to give it a go!
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[Meesh]

Update: Finished it today!
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[AladdinsGenie]

You can give me a general rundown!

[Meesh]

You asked for it! I tried to avoid spoilers, and I think I succeeded?

GENERAL RUN-DOWN:

It opens with a scene from Aladdin's childhood that introduces his mother and ne'er-do-well childhood friends. There are a handful of mentions to Aladdin's father Cassim here (and later as well). A lot of "street rats," including some introduced in the beginning, are given pretty major roles later in the book. More backstory on Aladdin's past and family is also given later.

From there, it pretty much follows the 1992 film for a few chapters, often word-for-word. There are some added scenes. The author wrote some pretty meaningful dialogue about class/poverty between Jasmine and Aladdin on their way to his hovel.

After trapping Aladdin in the cave, Jafar makes the same first 2 wishes and takes over Agrabah. Genie and Jasmine are both prisoner to Jafar, and they bond with each other, and we get Genie's whole backstory. From there, there isn't a *whole* lot of Genie.

Aladdin and Jasmine join forces with the street rats and other citizens to take down Jafar, who has turned the city into a dystopian hellscape. At first the people seem on board with Jafar because he provides bread and gold, but then he starts going nuts making people prove their loyalty and sometimes (graphically) killing them. His ultimate goal is to break the 3 laws of magic that Genie follows. (Make Jasmine and the people love him, kill people, and bring them back from the dead to create an undead army to conquer the world.)

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GENERAL NOTES:

Characters are close to their movie counterparts but not the same. Book Aladdin has a reputation for cracking jokes and vocally taking the moral high ground, as opposed to Film Aladdin who is clever and grapples with his ethics. Book Genie makes jokes when movie Genie would be solemn, and he has a quicker temper as well. Carpet is also more like a dog than a person. I can't mention Iago without a spoiler.

Public opinion of the royals is brought up often, and Jasmine grapples with her view of her father, and her own role, after learning about poverty in Agrabah.

A handful of characters (like, fairly major characters) get killed or maimed.

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OPINIONS IF YOU WANT THEM:

The quality of the writing is very good.

My biggest complaint is the tone. The sudden change of tone once Jafar takes over Agrabah was really jarring for me, and I had a hard time enjoying the second act in general because of this. The idea of Jasmine leading a street rat army is an interesting one, but the tone was set up like the Disney movie. So I expected a magical adventure to find some relic to defeat Jafar (or something). Not a gritty bloody zombie war dystopia.

The romance in the scene after Aladdin rescues Jasmine from the apple vendor is pretty great. I love the added scene/dialogue. Their chemistry of mind and body are both really believable and palpable. Once they're reunited after shit hits the fan, it's consistently pretty forced and generic. I was very disappointed with this.

Aladdin's character arc is non-existent. He's unfortunately written pretty bland and preachy IMO. Jasmine, on the other hand, is a bit more interesting. Seeing her as an underground "robber queen" is pretty cool honestly. And her grappling with her father's lack of leadership and what it means to have power is a GREAT addition.

Jafar makes Genie do a lot of things without wishing for them. Sometimes it's explained how, and sometimes it's not. Kinda confused me.

I felt everybody's added backstory was well done and, even when different from the movie and series canon, I liked it.

The discussions about class are very appropriate and honestly necessary in an adult twist of the tale.

I didn't love the audiobook narrator. He made Jasmine too soft spoken and had a habit of phrasing things like they were questions. In fact many of his inflections were poorly directed IMO. He also gave Genie like a New York accent, which was... a choice.
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[AladdinsGenie]

It is honestly baffling to me that after almost 30 years there has been very little canon talk about poverty and what you can do to help let alone help in Agrabah. I always think of the line in Do The Rat Thing when Sultan is like "Poor people? We have poor people in Agrabah?" after Jasmine says they need to do more to help. Like how is that just sitting there untouched? I thought even the live action movie would pick it up but still nothing.

"(Make Jasmine and the people love him)" - soooo he wants all of Agrabah to fall in romantic love with him? Cause wanting everyone to "love" him means there's gotta be some grey area in the Genie book somewhere if that ever comes up as we really only saw one type of definition.

New Yorker!Genie is killing me, though

I might have to check this out just to say I've read it. Thanks!

[Meesh]

Yeah the book doesn't "solve" poverty, but it talks about it, and it ends with Jasmine resolved to do something about it. There is discussion of the moral ambiguity of stealing, how even able-bodied street rats can't find honest work, and prejudices between the classes.

Jafar gets a very brief, vague background, and it's basically implied that literally nobody has ever loved him. Pretty sure he's not after Agrabah's romantic love, but hey beggars can't be choosers
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[zitagirl]

I think the topic of poverty and such is simply not an easy thing to fully grasp and make it believable while also make it well...fitting for something that is mainly an action-comedy. Not handled well you can easily end up in the same situation as the Prequel Triology of Star Wars with its politics.

Simply put, it takes a lot to properly handle such a topic without being jarring in tone, which reading Meesh's words, seem to actually be an issue in this book.

Back to the book, I have heard about it and even looked up quite a few reviews, even some spoiler-heavy ones. The overall main criticism seem to be the weird tone that tires to be much more serious, but also still be somewhat Disney-ish, which given the execution was not exactly handled well.

Plus what I heard and read about book versions of the chars both here and elsewhere... not impressed. It's good that Jasmine gets more development, but the others plus the new chars seem to be very lacking. Even Jafar sounds like being as twisted and dark just for shock value and such (though I blame that on the mentality of if something is for adults, it has to be dark and even gory).

I will probably read it one day to really have a proper opinion on it (though I'm not sure if we actually have these Twisted books in the country) but I'm not exactly the biggest fan of these type of stuff in general.
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You know your sanity is long gone when your favourites are a boy genius, a wacky genie, a mad man with a box and a deathberry

[Meesh]

I actually thought Jafar going mad was kind of a cool twist. But yeah. The tone was hard to pin down for a while.
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