It’s not the first time that a creative mind has posed the
question, “What if these beloved characters had kids?” Just ask J.K. Rowling and every fanfic writer on the
internet. It’s also not the first time Disney was ready to profit on nostalgia
and a thriving fanbase at the risk of tormenting those same fans with
corny-as-hell songs and butchered characterization.
Well, the Disney Channel film Descendants has at least one of those things down pat. Thankfully
the prequel novel The Isle of the Lost doesn’t
come with a soundtrack.
Parents and adult Disney fans should be aware that this
book and its TV counterpart are targeting a young demographic.
The writing meets those expectations with overstating the obvious and inserting casual hip lingo, yo, into the third-person narrative
voice. But what about the story and its characters? If they’re interesting
enough, can they overshadow the writing style?
Ehhh—kind of.
In some alternate universe where all the Disney fairytale
characters live together, where the technology has jumped from medieval to modern
in only a twenty-year span, King Beast of Beauty and the Beast fame has united all the kingdoms
into—brace yourselves—the U.S.A., aka The United States of Auradon (sometimes called the United Kingdoms of Auradon). It’s a land where everyone
is happy. That is, the royals are. The sidekicks stuck with the grinding,
barely compensated labor that keeps the fairytale kingdoms running are another
matter. (There’s social commentary in here, but I just can’t put my finger
on it.) Nevermind them, though. What we really care about is what happened to
all the villains who formerly threatened the happily-ever-afters of these now
settled heroes. In short, eternal banishment to the Isle of the Lost, a
floating prison/garbage heap. They have ramshackle homes and an economy based
on theft and swindling. They regularly eat leftover rotten food from Auradon,
and if they’re not living in drafty, cobwebbed castles, they make do in tin-roofed
huts crawling with vermin. It’s a wonder half the population doesn’t have food
poisoning or diphtheria.
Like so many things about the Descendants premise, it isn’t
the first time heroic characters have put their terrible tormentors in horrific
conditions and justify it with, “Well, they deserve it,” and expect to maintain
the higher moral ground. Funny how for all its modernization, Auradon doesn’t
have a Human Rights Watch.
Fortunately, the residents of the Isle of Internment—I mean the Isle of
the Lost take their circumstances relatively well. They believe the food, which
would have Gordon Ramsay reeling, feeds their tough, cruel spirit. You know, instead of their bodies. And
there’s nothing like dreams of vengeance to keep the spring in your step.
Readers will find plenty of weird logical somersaults like these to support the preposterous setup. Then again, these could just be coping
mechanisms the villains have devised and passed on to their children as truths.
Yes, there are children living on
this island. In fact, they were born
here, raised by their morally corrupt parents and enjoying about as healthy a
childhood as you’d expect.
Oh, and there’s a school for them, Dragon Hall. It has the aesthetic of
Hogwarts’ dungeons, and its classes are probably equivalent to those for villains at Ever After High.
And who are our villain-spawned heroes living on this isle
and attending evil school? They’re Mal (daughter of Maleficent), Jay (son of
Jafar), Evie (daughter of Evil Queen—that’s her name in this world, not just a title), and Carlos (son of Cruella
De Vil).
If you’re like me when I first learned these names, you
might be cringing and rubbing your temples. It’s almost insulting, as though
the creators assumed kids would be too stupid to keep track of which kid sprang from which villain's loins. However—yes, there is a “however”—the novel presents a
compelling case for why this naming device is used. Even more surprising,
while the narrative points out a lot
of things that don’t need an in-depth explanation—like Mal’s wardrobe—it does unpack some of the serious problems with growing up the child of an egotistical, not to mention homicidal, villain.
I’ll be honest: I haven’t seen the movie. I know the general plot. What I don’t know is how much the audience gets to see of the kids’
relationships with their families. To its credit, Isle portrays the dynamics of each of them. Mal lives in the shadow
of her mother’s malicious expectations, and just about everything she does is
driven by a desire to be respected and loved. Jay and Evie are slightly
better off in that their parents want a good future for them (but more for
themselves). Carlos is stuck being his mother’s abused servant. All these
factors drive the plot of the book: at a party Mal devises to get revenge on
Evie for a ten-year-old grudge, Carlos unwittingly bursts open a hole in the
dome over the island that keeps out magic. The incident causes Maleficent’s
staff, the Dragon’s Eye, to reawaken, as well as resurrect her beloved raven Diablo. This development prompts Maleficent to send Mal to fetch the staff. Mal agrees in hopes of
cursing Evie and showing her mother that she is worthy of being the Mistress of
Evil’s daughter. Evie and Carlos agree to escape their mothers for a
while, and Jay hopes to please his father by stealing the Dragon’s Eye for him.
While keeping the plot at a steady pace, the book also
grapples with the emotional impact of their warped home lives. These kids are kids. They know their parents don’t love
them as they should, but what can they do? They cope in whatever ways they can,
each unique to their personality. My greatest dread about launching into this book was that
the child villains would be bland copy-cats of their parents. Instead, I met
characters who, while falling into other clichés (the tough-on-the-outside,
soft-on-the-inside leader Mal; the charming rogue Jay; the
pretty-with-hidden-smarts Evie; and the mechanical genius/punching bag Carlos),
have real, understandable emotions. They deal with the crisis of being villainous, as their parents taught them, vs. being true to themselves. None of
these kids are born evil, which seems to be Descendants’ primary message: who
you are isn’t determined by where you come from, but by what you want to be and
the choices you make.
Cheesy as some of the dialogue and puns are (one word,
people: Broomba), a story with a message like that is one I can get behind. I’d rather see The Isle of the Lost
as a movie instead of Descendants. As
long as it isn’t a musical! Or it gets a better lyricist.
Rating: 3/5
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