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Irene M (130 KP) rated A Whole New World in Books
Dec 7, 2018
The first about 1/3 of the book follows the Disney film pretty much to the letter, and without surprising anyone too much that is when the story changes.
In the film Aladdin gets the lamp… in this book he doesn’t (I won’t write “spoiler” as that bit is written on the front cover) and needless to say the camel dung hits the fan.
Where I think people might not like this book is the style of writing. Without being derogatory to the style this is very fanfictiony. You know those AU stories where one thing has changed? Well, that. At times the language is a bit too modern, it IS set in old Agrabah afterall.
I can see where the author tried to go with the plot, and while maybe not the most highbrow retelling of the story, it also wasn’t as bad as the previous reviews I’d read made it out to be. Certainly not a kids story (a tad gory, character death warning, violence etc) but a logical enough route for the bad guy winning.
Don’t go into this book expecting an epic Disney tale and you might well enjoy it. The author has rewritten Beauty and The Beast and Sleeping Beauty to follow this one, and I’m going to give them a read as well.
However, he passed away in 2006 while finishing the final novel in his <i>Troy</i> trilogy (<i>Fall of Kings</i>), which was then finished by his second wife Stella.
<i>The City</i> is her first fully solo outing. Following recent trends, this definitely weighs in on the 'epic' side of the fantasy scales: think 'A Game of Thrones', where one novel is the size of three what I would term 'normal' reads. Indeed, the novel itself is split into various sections: personally I feel that it could have been split into two or maybe three separate books rather than under the one cover.
<i>The City</i> of the title (which is never actually named) is ancient and bloated, locked in an endless war with its enemies. Built over centuries, it reminded me somewhat of a passage in one of Pratchett's Discworld books (I forget which, and referring to Ankh-Morpork), something along the lines of:
'the main thing Ankh-Morpork is built on is Ankh-Morpork'.
That could be a pretty fair description of The City as well!
I also found some sections to be slow-moving, and while I never lost interest in the story, it also never really grabbed me, seeming to lack that certain something to turns a good story into a great story.
Would I read more by Stella Gemmell? At the moment, I'm undecided.