OUAT Reawakened Book Review

[fairycutie86]

I wasn’t quite sure where to put this, so I just decided to go with the Fan Creations area. Anyway, hope it’s alright I place it here. But I did a book review on my book channel for the OUAT Reawakened novel by Odette Beane. If anyone has read the book, or if you’re interested in getting, please check out this link. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[RumplesGirl]

Bummer!

I read the first chapter when it was previewed online and was a bit turned off by new dialogue because I had seen the show so much that I could only “hear” the original script. Super bummed that there are no Rumple or Jefferson flashbacks, love them.

But I was looking forward to reading the deleted scenes, which you make sound quite interesting. Especially the August and Jefferson conversation Emma hears!

Your review is really fleshed out, well done!

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[angiebelle]

It’s funny- I totally agree with your negative points, but I still rather enjoyed the book.  It was fun getting into Emma and Snow/Mary Margret’s heads.  Most of your cons relate directly to your first point- that the stories are told from only 2 points of view so any moment they were not directly involved in gets only a passing mention.  I was wondering how they were going to do that when I first heard they were doing it that way.  I thought it was pretty clever to have Henry recount the other characters’ stories through his book, but yes- I missed having them fully fleshed out.  They could have done a set of books instead of trying to squish the whole season into one.

I didn’t notice all of the dialogue changes because unlike many other Oncers, I haven’t actually gone back and rewatched earlier episodes!  I did notice that Rumple never said “Dearie” which I thought was odd.

I think the book is at least worth a read for any Oncer.  I would just recommend going in knowing it’s not an exact transcript of the show and accept it for what it is- a quickly produced and thrown together adaptation made to cash in on the popularity of the show .  It’s fun to make comparisons.  I agree that one should only read it if one is familiar with the series, or it might get awfully confusing.

 

 

[timespacer]

Excellent review! Thanks for posting it. I had pretty much the same reaction to the book. I’m such a huge fan of the show that I consider the book was worth my time and money for the sake of seeing a little more of what was going on inside Snow and Emma’s heads, but just barely.

I didn’t mind the occasional changes in dialogue. Even though some of the changed dialogue was pretty bad, most of the changes were neutral and a few even even improved on the original, given that they had to be presented in written form without the visual impact of seeing the actors’ delivery. At least the changes kept the book from being as stale as simply reading a copy of the scripts. Alas, like you, I can’t find much else to say about this book that is good.

I suspect you are right that the book was rushed into print and that may be the cause of many of its flaws. How else can we explain the decision to leave out several episodes when the book was not that long to begin with? Considering that the story is presented from Emma and Snow’s point of view, it is surprising that they chose to leave out “True North”. While it was not an episode that advanced the overall plot, the Storybrooke portion afforded a lot of opportunities to evoke Emma’s memories and see her changing thoughts. The same could be said of “That Still Small Voice”;  that episode would have provided a lot of opportunity for exploring Emma’s relationship with Regina and her developing feelings for Henry. The necessary background information from the flashbacks of both episodes could have easily been provided by the usual device of having Henry give a quick summary from his book.

As you mention, screen-to-book adaptations are generally much worse than book-to-screen adaptations. Isaac Asimov once told a story about getting the contract to write a novelization of the movie, Fantastic Voyage. According to him, not only did the book suffer because he was under intense time pressure, but the publishers cut out the best of what he wanted to add to the story and insisted he include other things that ruined the book. Even as gifted a writer as Asimov couldn’t turn the result into a very good book.

Even though I didn’t care much for the book, like you, I’m sure I’ll buy the next one they release – partly because I want to support the show (every penny ABC makes from merchandising makes keeping the show on the air that much more attractive to them) and partly because I hope they’ll find the books profitable enough to continue a long series of them. If they do, hopefully we’ll eventually get a few books that are really good and explore aspects of the story which weren’t presented on screen.

 

[fairycutie86]

Thanks for watching the review, Rumplesgirl, angiebelle, and timespacer! I appreciate it! I wasn’t sure anyone would watch it since I made it a tad bit too long. I had trouble editing out my thoughts, haha!

I agree with you guys on so many things! Timespacer, you mentioned that “True North” and “That Still Small Voice” could have easily fit into the story, and I totally agree. There were moments in those very vital to Emma’s character development.

Thanks again for watching! I’m really looking forward to the graphic novel coming out with the Huntsman. I can’t wait to review that! A preview page was released for it a month or two ago and the art looked gorgeous. Have a feeling I won’t be disappointed with that one.

[fairycutie86]

Just an update, I bought the OUAT comic with Regina/Huntsman a few days after it came out and I’ll be reading it in another few days (after I finish the Hunger Games series, haha). I will def. be doing a video review for the comic as well. But the video may not go up until that first week of October.

[Author]

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