If you know me you know I really like this movie. So let's take a look at the book, spoilers ahead.
Mufasa is a young lion cub separated from his parents. He gets taken in by a pride of other lions, where he befriends another cub named Taka, the duo eventually becoming brothers. When Mufasa and Taka are young-adults, a pride of white lions attacks the brother's pride. They will now have to set off on their own in order to flee these Outsiders.
Okay so, while I do like the movie this is based on, I simply think this novel...isn't very good. Not terrible or anything, but I don't think this story lends itself as well to the written medium as it does the visual one.
For one, it tries to have the same level of comedy as the movie does, and this doesn't work at all. Timon and Pumbaa already weren't funny in the movie, but at least in the visual medium you have stuff like timing, line delivery, sound effects and visuals to accompany the "jokes". Here, they're just written down plainly from the script and it doesn't work at all. I think this story would've worked so much better had Timon and Pumbaa been removed, or at least their comedy toned down. Same for Zazu's comedic bits, to be honest.
The writing was also just very bland and what irked me the most is show utterly lacking in description it felt. We barely get descriptions of stuff like character appearances and some environments, it's all very bare bones. Characters also get namedropped far more often than is necessary, which is where character descriptions would've come in nicely. (e.g. saying "the slender lioness" instead of just "Sarabi").
I also though the pacing was even more awkward than in the movie. Granted, there are one or two expanded or added scenes in the book that I do appreciate, but the pacing overall felt pretty wonky and the framing device didn't make things much better, especially not with Timon and Pumbaa's "comedy" routine. I really think it might've worked better if they'd just told the story straightforward without the framing device, or either had it just at the start, middle and ending, not every few chapters.
I don't hate this book or anything, but man it just didn't work as well as the movie did. I guess if you're a diehard fan of the movie, maybe this is worth checking out for the additional scenes, but as a book this just doesn't work quite as well.
Rating: 2/5
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