Review--Maleficent by Elizabeth Rudnick

Maleficent was a different sort of faerie. For one thing, she was raised by all the Fair Folk after her parents were killed. For another, she believed there had to be some good in everyone, including humans. Happy and spirited, Maleficent was beloved by all who knew her. That is, until she experienced the ultimate betrayal by a trusted friend.

Enraged and embarking on a quest fir vengeance, Maleficent must forge her own path in the world to make sense of it all. And while she learns to harness her great powers, the forces against her only grow stronger. The question is, who really is the evil one in this fairy tale?

I've been pretty much head over heels about the upcoming movie Maleficent since I heard about it early last year. Then when walking through Target one day, I saw this gorgeous little book with the smooth and pretty cover flap titled Maleficent. Elizabeth Rudnick has written a ton of other movie adaptation books in the past, but this was my first by her.

Now I know what some of you might be thinking, why read a book that's based on a movie? Sure we see movies based on books, but why bother with the opposite? Well, in most cases, you're going to get MORE story! More character development and knowledge then you would in a movie! You'll SEE a character looking all morose in the movie and won't quite get why, well when you read the book, you're inside their head...or the third person narrator is letting you see what they are feeling through their pondering or whatever! You just get MORE!

So naturally, this is the story of Maleficent, the evil fairy as we all know her from the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, but apparently, someone has gotten it all wrong! It's not quite like Gregory Maguire's Wicked, wherein the Wicked Witch wasn't really all that wicked and Dorothy was more a villain (in a way!), but Maleficent is still pretty villainous here, we just know her reasons.

I don't want to get into too much plot details, because then it will spoil the movie. But I will say, that I don't feel spoiled. I had an idea of what was going to go on in the movie and it turns out I was right for the most part, but the person who betrayed Maleficent is what came as a shock to me! The preview clips do a good job of giving you the best idea of what the movie's all about!

But naturally, I still have to see it! I gotta just SEE it all! And since it is a movie adaptation I will admit that Angelina was coming to mind as our Maleficent and the same for the actress for Aurora. And I will say here, we don't really hate Aurora either for "mucking up" Maleficent's life, like we might have with Dorothy for Elphaba. There's a different kind of relationship going on here. It was quite enjoyable!

I have to say that I really did love it! I loved seeing bits of the Disney fairy tale we all know and love being woven into the story. Granted our fairy names were different and this book does stick with just the three good fairies instead of seven like in the original tale--7 was the number there, just can't recall if the Evil fairy was number seven or she if she was oddball 8, but no matter! And more weirdness to me is that if I couldn't think of the actor who is playing whatever role, the cartoon character popped up in my head, mostly for King Stefan, Prince Phillip and King Stefan's wife! Who is given a name! I just totally forgot it now...I blame the cold!

Overall, I'd say this was a worthy read! But I know when talking with a few people, they're not so willing to read movie adaptation books. And that's fine. I know I've read them in the past myself for select movies. The Underworld editions--even read the "prequel" novel before it was a prequel movie and then got it's own revised prequel novel! Van Helsing was another and of course the TV series Roswell was one I read wholeheartedly in every series format available! There might have been a Buffy book in the mix too and I even read a few Supernatural ones, but then my TBR pile started filling up with books and I felt like I didn't have time for these kinds of reads anymore to follow religiously. They would have to be analyzed on a case by case basis. And naturally with this one, Maleficent, I had to read it for oh so many reasons!


Overall Rating 4.5/5 stars--I guess what fell flat for me from time to time was trying to understand more of the feelings Maleficent had towards the beginning. Again, I was reading this with a cold, so things like that might have just slipped my comprehension. But it was still a pretty awesome read!