The Beast Within: A Tale of Beauty’s Prince by Serena Valentino (review)

The tale of a beautiful girl transforming a beast to his original princely form is a familiar and often retold one, but the story of how exactly the prince initially came to be cursed and why is less well known. Valentino sets her version of the prince’s perspective in the Disney world, with Cogsworth, Lumiere, and even Mrs. Potts all making an appearance. The setting and the plot are far darker here, however, and musical numbers with dancing cutlery are replaced by the internal contemplations of an increasingly melancholic and occasionally violent Beast as he transforms from human to monster. It begins with the Prince’s betrayal of Circe, a young maiden whom he initially woos for her beauty and then rejects when he discovers she is merely a pig farmer’s daughter. Her older sisters, a trio of magical witches, vengefully cast a spell on the Prince, and the spoiled, selfish man futilely tries to outrun his fate, losing his human form and almost his mind in the process. Valentino is so successful at making the Prince unlikable that he seems nearly irredeemable, and a disjointed timeline makes it difficult to identify the chronology of the moral transformation that must precede his physical one. The combination of the Disney tie-in and the thoughtful, more folkloric elements, though, makes this an interesting choice for readers who’ve outgrown the pink-princess phase but are still captivated by fairy tales.