I can't say that I really enjoyed this book. It's a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, a story that I love, but in this case I didn't find that the retelling improved on the story at all. The premise is intriguing enough: this is Beast's story, starting from before he met Beauty and explaining how and why he came to be a Beast. Unfortunately, I thought the reason for his transformation was unsatisfying, the descriptions of his time as a beast were distasteful, and he was a pretty unlikeable character overall.

Beast is set in Persia, and the protagonist is a prince. As his servant is preparing a camel for sacrifice at a religious festival, he notices that the camel has a scar that makes it unfit for this sacrifice. The servant has no alternative camel ready, an oversight that could result in a severe penalty, possibly even death. The prince, who has a good heart and a dislike for the suffering of others, weighs the risks and benefits and decides that the camel should be sacrificed despite the flaw. This will save the servant and help the people, who receive portions of the meat. And, he reasons, God is merciful.

It's not entirely clear why this reasoning breaks down. The prince is turned into a beast (a lion, in particular) not by God, but by the angry spirit of the camel. I can't honestly say why the camel was angry, because it wasn't explained what exactly happens to an animal that is sacrificed inappropriately. For whatever reason, though, the prince is punished for his attempt to do good by being turned into a lion, and the curse will only be broken if he wins a woman's love (this part is explained by the camel being female, though again, the logic here isn't entirely clear to me). Needless to say, if the goal is to bring the Beast to life by providing his backstory, the backstory needs to make sense. I wasn't exactly satisfied in this regard.

So then the prince is a lion, and does lion things. Although as a man he has never laid eyes on a women other than his mother, his first act as a lion is to mate with some female lions in the palace hunting grounds. This wasn't described in very much detail, but I still could have done without it. I just didn't need to hear about his “thrusting”. Also, note that this is a YA book, or possibly even children's. The prince also spends a lot of his time hunting, which I didn't find very interesting. Basically, I wasn't really into the story until the requisite scene where Belle's father encounters the beast while seeking shelter from the storm; i.e., until Napoli's story converges with the traditional version. Unfortunately, this didn't happen until more than halfway through.

I did enjoy the development of the Beast's relationship to Belle, but I couldn't fully like him because of the way he treated her pet fox. This fox was possibly the best character in the story; he was loving, playful, loyal, forgiving, and basically wonderful all around. And the Beast constantly thought things along the lines of “What a stupid animal” or “That foolish fox....”, for no particular reason that I could see. I'm not sure how he changed from someone who seemed so compassionate initially into someone who thought badly about innocent animals; and no matter how well he treated Belle, I think his ideas about the fox were more telling about his personality.

So, an initially likeable man is transformed into a beast because he made a religious error while trying to help others; once he's a beast, he becomes less likeable rather than learning any sort of valuable lesson.

I've enjoyed other books by Donna Jo Napoli in the past, but I think I'll stick to Robin McKinley for Beauty and the Beast. ( )

I decided to read Beast by Donna Jo Napoli after reading Robin McKinley's retellings of the Beauty and the Beast (Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast ; Rose Daughter).

Beast tells the story of Belle and the Beast falling in love under extreme circumstances a castle in France, but the beginning of Napoli's tale starts in Persia with the son of the Shah and his beastly curse being handed down by a djinn.

The language is lovely, the Beasts travels from Persia to France a bit heart breaking and the Islamic insights add lots of interest in this retelling. ( )

The class story of Beauty and the Beast told from the Beast's point of view starting from the curse until he finds a women who can love him. The main character is the Beast and he is well developed in his Persian identity and how becoming a lion changes him. The plot is well developed and although is just Orasmyn for about half the book, his struggles with how to remain human while a lion is intriguing. The changing setting from the deserts of Persia to the safari of India to the mountains of France are all well developed and easy to picture as the reader follows Orasmyn on his journey. This is a great view of the story of Beauty and the Beast for the tales lovers, also for slightly more romantic boys since the story is from a male point of view. It is an excellent book for a public library in the teen section for mature middle school readers and high schoolers. ( )

This is a story of a Shah's son from Persia who improperly allows a camel to be sacrificed. In revenge, a pari (Persian fairy) turns the man into a lion. The only way to remove the curse is to have a woman fall in love with him. Conveienced that this will never happen, the lion goes to India to live as a lion. Unable to live in a pride, the man must face the reality that his only hope is to find a french woman who loves roses just as much as he does.
I didn't particuarly like this book. I felt it was a little long. The writing was good but uneven. The first part of the book is dedicated to the main character living as a lion. I felt this part of the book could have been much shorter. The author feels the need to document every kill. The end feels almost forced, as though the author needed to finish up the story and didn't want to spend too much time on it. It's an okay read, but not what I had expected. ( )

Read this while I was quite sick, and have vague impressions of it. I enjoyed it, I think, but even though it's only been a day or two I can't really remember anything about it. I'll have to re-read this later when I'm not drugged up.

I remember being surprised by the Islamic influences, but liking the Persian prince quite a bit more than a traditional French prince. ( )