REVIEW BY: Christie
TITLE: The Naked Prince and Other Stories from Fairyland
AUTHOR: Joe Cosentino
NARRATOR: Joel Leslie
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 3h 20m
RELEASE DATE: October 21, 2016
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 18-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.
In Whatever Happened To…? friction ensues between a celebrity with a growing appendage and a reporter who has a thing for giants.
And in Ice Cold, 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:
With the recent resurgence of modern fairy tales, I was interested in The naked Prince and Other Stories From Fairyland, because the blurb really sold me on it. Well, it was an okay collection with a couple thoughtful twists, but didn’t grab at me like other modern fairy tales I have read and/ or listened to recently. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the best either.
The Naked Prince and Other Stories From Fairyland is a collection of short stories that all tie into each other in some way or another. I can’t go into too much detail on each story without giving away some spoilers, but from Cinderella to Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Pinocchio to The Snow Queen, each of our classic and well known fairy tales has been reimagined with an erotic modern gay twist.
Tho, I must say that my favorite out of all the stories is The Golden Rule (essentially Goldilocks and the Three Bears), with Ice Cold (an updated version of The Snow Queen) as a close second. Would I listen to this collection again? Sure. Was this audiobook bad? No. In fact, altho the stories themselves were fairly average, Joel Leslie did a great job narrating.
The narration really made the collection for me. I mean, Joe Cosentino’s twist on well known fairy tales was decent for the most part, but nothing really wow’d me. In all honesty, narrators can make or break a book experience. It takes a lot of talent and even more chutzpah to put yourself out there in the world for all others to hear, when becoming a narrator. Well, for that matter, so does becoming a published author. So, what I am trying to say is “Nicely done, Joel Leslie. Nicely done.”
RATING: 
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