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Who is the main character of "Aladdin"?

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[quote="Meesh"]You asked for it! :lol: I tried to avoid spoilers, and I think I succeeded?

GENERAL RUN-DOWN:

It opens with a scene from Aladdin's childhood that introduces his mother and ne'er-do-well childhood friends. There are a handful of mentions to Aladdin's father Cassim here (and later as well). A lot of "street rats," including some introduced in the beginning, are given pretty major roles later in the book. More backstory on Aladdin's past and family is also given later.

From there, it pretty much follows the 1992 film for a few chapters, often word-for-word. There are some added scenes. The author wrote some pretty meaningful dialogue about class/poverty between Jasmine and Aladdin on their way to his hovel.

After trapping Aladdin in the cave, Jafar makes the same first 2 wishes and takes over Agrabah. Genie and Jasmine are both prisoner to Jafar, and they bond with each other, and we get Genie's whole backstory. From there, there isn't a *whole* lot of Genie.

Aladdin and Jasmine join forces with the street rats and other citizens to take down Jafar, who has turned the city into a dystopian hellscape. At first the people seem on board with Jafar because he provides bread and gold, but then he starts going nuts making people prove their loyalty and sometimes (graphically) killing them. His ultimate goal is to break the 3 laws of magic that Genie follows. (Make Jasmine and the people love him, kill people, and bring them back from the dead to create an undead army to conquer the world.)

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GENERAL NOTES:

Characters are close to their movie counterparts but not the same. Book Aladdin has a reputation for cracking jokes and vocally taking the moral high ground, as opposed to Film Aladdin who is clever and grapples with his ethics. Book Genie makes jokes when movie Genie would be solemn, and he has a quicker temper as well. Carpet is also more like a dog than a person. I can't mention Iago without a spoiler.

Public opinion of the royals is brought up often, and Jasmine grapples with her view of her father, and her own role, after learning about poverty in Agrabah.

A handful of characters (like, fairly major characters) get killed or maimed.

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OPINIONS IF YOU WANT THEM:

The quality of the writing is very good.

My biggest complaint is the tone. The sudden change of tone once Jafar takes over Agrabah was really jarring for me, and I had a hard time enjoying the second act in general because of this. The idea of Jasmine leading a street rat army is an interesting one, but the tone was set up like the Disney movie. So I expected a magical adventure to find some relic to defeat Jafar (or something). Not a gritty bloody zombie war dystopia.

The romance in the scene after Aladdin rescues Jasmine from the apple vendor is pretty great. I love the added scene/dialogue. Their chemistry of mind and body are both really believable and palpable. Once they're reunited after shit hits the fan, it's consistently pretty forced and generic. I was very disappointed with this.

Aladdin's character arc is non-existent. He's unfortunately written pretty bland and preachy IMO. Jasmine, on the other hand, is a bit more interesting. Seeing her as an underground "robber queen" is pretty cool honestly. And her grappling with her father's lack of leadership and what it means to have power is a GREAT addition.

Jafar makes Genie do a lot of things without wishing for them. Sometimes it's explained how, and sometimes it's not. Kinda confused me.

I felt everybody's added backstory was well done and, even when different from the movie and series canon, I liked it.

The discussions about class are very appropriate and honestly necessary in an adult twist of the tale.

I didn't love the audiobook narrator. He made Jasmine too soft spoken and had a habit of phrasing things like they were questions. In fact many of his inflections were poorly directed IMO. He also gave Genie like a New York accent, which was... a choice.[/quote]

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