Unearthly (Beauty and her Alien, Book One)

Characters

For the sake of brevity, I’ve chosen to focus on the four driving characters of the story.

Corinne Kaminski, twenty-three, works at a kayak and ski shop in her home town of Wakpa. Her mother passed away when she was still quite young, impacting her painfully as she grew up. She lives with her loving father and until recently was dating local heartthrob, Joe (a modern day Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.) Over the course of the story Corinne proved herself to be curious and brave, taking unexpected surprises in her stride and using her intelligence and resourcefulness to see her way through trying situations. She had a memorable narrative voice, one I found myself listening to for hours in my head. There was also a subtle realism to her that helped to make her experiences come alive.

Joe, a twenty-seven year old modern day Gaston immediately struck me as the type of guy who hasn’t been told no a lot in his life. He had an air of entitlement to him, as though anything he wanted should effortlessly become his. The way he treated Corinne in this respect had me cringing and empathizing with her on a deeper level. Joe was charismatic and charming in his own way, as well as being successful, however he was also narcissistic and borderline obsessive over Corinne. It was easy to side against him as he represented a sort of anchor in Corinne’s life, one which was suffocating her and needed to be let go.

Del, the beastly master of an alien ship initially appeared the same way the Beast does in the beloved Disney classic; as closed off and somewhat fierce, with a temper that would easily drive a young woman like Corinne away. He is powerfully built, intimidating, and regal in his posture. We later learn that he is the Heir-apparent to his nation and so my initial regal impression came to make sense. Throughout the story, he proves to be more reasonable than I initially thought, granting Corinne’s requests and making the effort to get to know her when asked. I honestly went from being afraid of him, to shifting emotions around him just as Corinne did. In this regard, the author did a wonderful job having Corinne’s emotions transfer to the reader.

Finally, we come to Joanna, the alien ship’s Artificial Intelligence; a truly futuristic Mrs Potts type character. Joanna wasn’t what I had expected. When I think of AI, I think of cold, overly robotic sentient beings with no ounce of empathy or humour. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find that Joanna was very humanistic, with a wonderful sense of humour and a helpful and compassionate nature. I loved how her different moods were captured through shifting coloured fractals on the walls of the ship. One particular thing which tickled me was her self-proclaimed, ‘At heart, I’m what you call an introvert.’ This endeared me to her right away and only added to her growing sense of humanity, despite her AI state.