Reviewed by Sarina
TITLE: The Naked Prince and Other Tales from Fairyland
AUTHOR: Joe Cosentino
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 86 pages
RELEASE DATE: January 27, 2015
BLURB:
Cinder, a poor and beautiful young man who designs clothing, makeup, and hair for his stepmother and stepsisters, offers his clothing and slippers to a naked stranger in the woods who turns out to be none other than Prince Charming. Follow Cinder and Prince Charming in this twist on the classic “Cinderella” tale, as they discover their inner strengths and find their very own happily ever after. Enjoy “The Naked Prince” and three other reimagined Tales from Fairyland, each with a unique spin on stories we all know and love, including “The Golden Rule,” where eighteen-year-old Gideon Golden, after being thrown out of his home in Fairyland by his homophobic parents, breaks into the cottage of three burly men on Bear Mountain, “Whatever Happened To…?,” in which friction ensues between a celebrity with a growing appendage and the reporter who has a thing for giants, and “Ice Cold,” where young Gaelen must save his love Kieran after a handsome but evil prince freezes Kieran’s heart and bewitches him into being the prince’s slave.
REVIEW:
Normally I would start my review off with a recap of the story but pretty much everything that needs to be said is listed in the blurb. I’m sorry to say that I just wasn’t enchanted with this book at all. The first story, the reimagining of Cinderella, was the best of the book but that sadly wasn’t saying much. When I first started reading, I thought the story was coming off as a bit corny but I was willing to roll with it as I’ve read some fairytales that were written the same way. As I finished the first story and then moved onto the other three, however, it became apparent that whether the corniness was on purpose or not, there were other problems that couldn’t be overlooked.
The writing actually seemed to get worse the farther in to the book I went; the writing was immature and there were no true transitions to speak of in any of the stories. It was like the author wanted to move from point A to point C but didn’t feel like dealing with point B along the way and so just skipped it altogether. It was somewhat interesting seeing all of the fairytale characters that were mentioned or given a small cameo throughout the book but after a while it was almost like the author was throwing that diversity in to distract from the poorly written story. I love fairytales but this just made me want to go back and read one of my son’s books just so I’d have a good story overwriting this one. I don’t enjoy giving bad reviews, I really don’t, but this was so bad I was practically dragging myself through the pages just to finish it.
RATING:
BUY LINKS:
If you don’t like a book, why continue reading it, and why review it? This book was hysterically funny, a creative and romantic gay twist on fairytales. The reviewers on the other sites loved it.
I’m glad that others liked the book but I still didn’t. I continued to read and review it because not everyone is going to like every book and it isn’t realistic for there to only be ‘good’ reviews; honesty requires seeing both sides of the coin, not just one.