Review: THE BEAST WITHIN gets steamy, fast…and that might be the problem

Spoiler warning: This review contains spoilers for the first three chapters of The Beast Within.

The Beast Within is a mature romantasy series that is a webcomic adaptation of dikitalis‘s webnovel. Manta released the webcomic written by zorengyi with Pangeon illustrating on September 2. It was previously serialized and completed on Pocket Comics but due to the platform’s scheduled closure in October, it has moved to Manta.

Ray Lisbon and her brother Hayes have nowhere to go. Weighed down by a mountainous debt that they doubt they’ll ever pay off and with no home to return to, the two trek to a secluded mansion filled with red roses. There, they find a mysterious man named Clodan Cassell who is immediately interested in Ray. Unbeknownst to Ray, Clodan’s desire is more monstrous than human.

Eye candy

Based on the title alone, The Beast Within seems to be a darker retelling of The Beauty and the Beast with some twists, like Ray being illiterate whereas Disney’s Belle was a bookworm, and Clodan being a monster but not the tortured, reclusive Beast that we’re familiar with in the fairytale. I liked that we find out that the castle and its inhabitants are cursed early on, although I wish it wasn’t so quickly thrown aside in favor of steamy moments.

The story quickly establishes Clodan as an obsessive red flag male lead who isn’t used to people refusing him. Whether or not his personality had been warped due to a curse or if that’s his true nature remains to be seen. Ray is introduced as the beautiful, “pure and untainted” daughter of the Lisbon family whose education had been pushed aside because of her abrasive and abusive older brother. The art is quite pretty and effectively conveys the two characters’ personalities through Ray’s round blue eyes and bright attire and Clodan’s edgier appearance and his tendency of wearing shirts that show off his chest.

The sexual tension is high in just three chapters. I couldn’t help snickering a little when Ray notes that she smells a “refreshing, child-like innocence” in the room on the third floor. To that, I ask, “Girl…what innocence?” There is no way anything innocent has ever happened in that room. Seconds later, I’m proven right: Clodan has Ray in his lap, hands all over her, and immediately, she’s melting. Clodan…at least, take the girl out on a date first.

Innocent to a fault

That was also confusing for me. The progression of her falling for Clodan was shockingly fast. She went from humiliation about her being illiterate after Clodan gave her the storybook to wondering if she was strange for wanting to kiss him. It was a very odd pivot in thinking especially since the lead up to that thought was just a single panel of his mouth.

Unfortunately, The Beast Within falls into the standard romantasy trope of an innocent and naive female protagonist, and Ray seems unbelievably innocent. In the beginning of the second chapter, we see that there are four servants who work around the mansion, but Ray doesn’t seem surprised or startled when a strange woman who’s not one of those servants suddenly appears. The woman, whose name is revealed to be Della, warns her that this castle has been cursed and there’s a beast who is seeking to swallow her up. It couldn’t be any more obvious that she’s speaking of Clodan, and yet Ray doesn’t seem concerned.

Perhaps some of her ignorance can be explained by her traumatic childhood, as was hinted in the early chapters. Maybe she simply doesn’t know any better and has never been able to think for herself, but that doesn’t excuse her naivety. She doesn’t have a sense of danger and anytime she does feel something is off, she quickly forgets when she lays her eyes on Clodan.

While Clodan is much more pleasant toward Ray than he is toward Hayes, he hasn’t gone out of his way to do anything particularly nice for her except give her a book that he doesn’t know (yet) that she can’t read, and smile. So what reason does she have to like him?

As it currently stands, there isn’t much of one.

I’m struggling to root for the two of them, both as a couple and individually. I’m hoping that The Beast Within‘s fast pacing is only meant to hook readers in and that, as the story continues, it’ll take a few steps back to build the lore and develop the main characters.