“Poor Unfortunate Soul” From The Villains Book Series – A Disney Nerds Book Club Review

Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch is the third installment in Serena Valentino‘s Villains series. As you might already know, each Villains novel focuses on a different “bad guy” and their particular backstory. If you’ve been following my reviews, you know that I throughly enjoyed the first book, Fairest of All, the story of the Snow Queen’s descent into murderous rage. I was less enthused with the series’ second story, The Beast Within.

Perhaps I should take a moment to clearly explain why I had such different feelings about each of the preceding books.

In Fairest of All, the story was mostly told from the Snow Queen’s perspective. You meet the Queen just before her wedding to Snow White’s father and stay with her until the end. Admittedly, it was an emotionally difficult read. The Queen’s descent into grief and bitterness after her husband’s death feels very real. There was a clear line between the kind and loving Queen that we meet in the beginning to the violent, selfish witch that emerges within the book’s pages.

The Beast Within also tells some of the Beast’s (from Beauty and the Beast) backstory, explaining the effects of the curse and how it messed with his psyche and conscience. We definitely watch his decline from spoiled yet regal prince to almost animal-like in his actions and demeanor. However, we don’t get to stay with the Beast for the entire story. Much of the book is told from the perspective of The Odd Sisters. “Who are these sisters?” you ask. What a great question! Let’s take a look:

The Odd Sisters

If you haven’t read any of Valentino’s Villains series, you might be a little confused as to the identity and presumed importance of these original characters. The Odd Sisters are essentially three powerful witches. They prefer to speak in rhymes and thrive only when creating chaos and pain in the lives of others.

While we don’t know much about their history (a later novel explores this a little bit more), we do know that they have a fourth sister named Circe. This other sister is not as viscerally connected as the other three, however, Circe possesses a special magic of her own.

As we continue through this book series, it’s becoming clear that these sisters are mostly, if not totally responsible for every Disney movie we hold dear. They gifted the Snow Queen her Magic Mirror, orchestrated the final battle between The Beast and Gaston, and helped Ursula position herself to take advantage of a young mermaid. Their motivation behind their evil interference remains unclear, but I suspect we will find out more as the series progresses.

The Little Mermaid

In order to appreciate Poor Unfortunate Soul, you must be familiar with the source material. The Little Mermaid is the story of Ariel, a mermaid obsessed with human treasures. After she rescues a man (Prince Eric) from drowning, she falls in love and vows to be with him forever. Of course, there’s one problem with this plan – her lack of legs. The Sea Witch (Ursula) offers to help her with this predicament in exchange for her voice, Ariel’s most distinguishing physical quality.

Ariel agrees to this exchange and spends the next few days trying to get Eric to fall in love with her. As desperate as that sounds, she almost succeeds. Despite his inability to remember hardly anything from his rescue (besides her beautiful voice), Eric is ready to kiss Ariel within hours of their meeting. Ursula cannot allow this, of course, and she transforms into human form. Through a combination of Ariel’s purchased voice and contrived enchantment, the Prince falls in love with the Sea Witch instead.

Fast-forwarding through the messy details and final battle (which we actually do experience in graphic detail in the book), Eric is finally released from Ursula’s evil tentacles and Ariel and her prince live happily ever after.

Poor Unfortunate Soul

While Poor Unfortunate Soul occurs alongside the events of The Little Mermaid, the book doesn’t include enough information to understand the story. In fact, if you’re not familiar with the Disney version of the film – you’re going to be pretty lost. Ursula’s quest to reign the seas takes a backseat to the drama unfolding between Valentino’s original characters.

Besides The Odd Sisters, you’ll find several of Valentino’s creations within these pages. We’ve already mentioned Circe, the fourth sister and enchantress responsible for The Beast’s original curse. There’s also Nanny, Pflanze (a cat), and Tulip (another former sweetheart of The Beast).

The majority of the action focuses on these original characters. The witches are frantically searching for their beloved and lost sister. Nanny is rediscovering long-forgotten pieces of herself and Tulip is entertaining gentleman callers. While we do see pieces of Ursula’s tortured history and quest to imprison Triton’s young daughter, these are only flashes. They are small moments that happen quite independently of the other seemingly more pressing storylines.

–SPOILER—

In the end, however, we do get to witness the final battle between the overgrown Sea Witch and the human prince. While we learn that it’s the sisters’ incantations that actually end Ursula’s life, this resolution almost feels as if it’s added a bit of realism to the original movie. How could a human possibly defeat a supernatural being of her power and position? Knowing that Prince Eric had the support of these magical creatures makes his victory a little easier to comprehend.

My Take

I started reading this series because I wanted to more fully understand the villains and their motivations. No one begins their life with the evil attitude that these characters seem to embody. I want to understand what trauma or event caused the villains to become malicious and obsessed. In the end, I didn’t really enjoy Poor Unfortunate Soul for one main reason – there just wasn’t enough Disney in it!

While the previous books in this series have been at least moderately satisfying, Poor Unfortunate Soul left me feeling cheated. I read almost 200 pages only to understand a fraction of what makes Ursula so angry.

And I’m not the only one who feels this way. On Serena Valentino’s website, she says,

“When I wrote Fairest of All, I hadn’t anticipated Disney would want me to write another novel so I wrote it as a stand-alone story – but to my surprise Disney asked me to write another book, so I decided it would be awesome to link the stories together by bringing the Odd Sisters along from Fairest to The Beast Within. When I wrote Poor Unfortunate Soul, I decided to not only to continue the Odd Sisters’ story line, but to bring along some characters from The Beast Within so I could expand upon their story in Poor Unfortunate Soul and to expand upon their universe…

For those of you who feel Ursula didn’t have enough “page time” in this novel, don’t fret. More pages will be devoted to her in the upcoming novels.”

If her exposition on these original characters was necessary to her overall vision for the series, I understand. However, I’m glad that we will have more time with Ursula as the books progress. While I currently have conflicting feelings about the series, I look forward to reading the next book. Mistress of Evil focuses on Maleficent and her unfolding story as the Dark Fairy. Stay tuned for more Villains reviews!