The deal: Ping will have until sunrise to find Shang’s spirit and find a way back out of the underworld, or his soul will become part of Diyu forever. When Shang’s spirit guide, a lion named ShiShi, and the spirit of his recently deceased father come to Ping that night and explain that Shang’s spirit has already crossed into Diyu, she and ShiShi venture into the underworld to make a deal with King Yama, lord of Diyu. Mulan’s foolish bravery defeats the Huns, but Shang is critically injured in the process of trying to save her as Ping.

This story starts with the battle against the Huns on the snowy mountains when the battle takes a twist. But what those beliefs were was a mystery to me. As a Disney fan, I was aware that the Chinese Disney Parks lacked cookie cutter Haunted Mansion attractions because the theme didn’t jive with their own beliefs in the afterlife. “What if Mulan had to travel to the underworld?” That’s the question posed on the cover of Reflection and through this original tale, audiences will learn about Diyu and its eighteen levels. But in Reflection, we discover an original story that combines Mulan’s journey with Chinese mythology about the afterlife.

Both of those titles involved a twist where the villain had another trick up their sleeve, such as Jafar getting ahold of the lamp in the Cave of Wonders or Maleficent having a bonus curse that nobody knew about. I previously reviewed two of Liz Braswell’s entries, A Whole New World and Once Upon a Dream. For those unfamiliar, this series takes classic Disney stories and proposes an alternate scenario. The fourth entry in Disney’s A Twisted Tale book series adds a new layer to the story of Mulan with Reflection by Elizabeth Lim.

Twisted tales elizabeth lim