As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale
Written By: Liz Braswell
Written By: Liz Braswell
As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale is a lesser known variation of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale from Disney Reads made in September 2016. As the title suggests, this is a spin-off of Beauty and the Beast where Belle's mother was the Enchantress that cursed the beast.
Overall Summary
The story is fairy tale is fairy similar to the original but Belle gets the opportunity to touch the Enchanted Rose and would get a vision of her mother cursing the Beast.
After Belle touches the rose, the castle slowly begins to sink into the Earth.
In the end, the Enchantress is left so weaken she can either transform the beast back into her human form or she can turn the staff back to normal. The beast insisted on the latter.
While reading this story, we follow the perspective of three characters in particular: Belle's father (Maurice), the Enchantress (Rosalind and Belle herself. In the beginning, we find out how Maurice ends meeting Rosalind through Belles father's perspective being more fleshed out than in the original.
We get a bit darker variation where Belle is trapped in the castle with the Beast being violent and making threats. Throughout this part we can feel Belle's fear.
In this version, Belle is a lot quicker to anger than she originally should be according to one of my sources and what I can find skimming through this book.
The romance is less at the forefront then in the original. We focus more on the Enchantress and her relationship with Maurice.
The objects that fill the palace of the beast do not have eyes or mouths so they look a bit more realistic.
The beast in the story slowly gets more and more beast like throughout this version of the tale struggling to hold onto his hummanity.