I've never read the Fables graphic novels, but I'm going to have to hunt them down now! This adult fantasy novel is a twisted fairy tale but is a stand-alone novel in the graphic novel series world.

Everyone has heard of Peter Piper, but Willingham can really tell his tale. Peter and his brother Max are the sons of a traveling piper, but the invasion of the Empire leads them to run away to the Black Forest. Terrible things happen there. Max is selfish and downright evil, while Peter is everything bright and good. Each chapter switches from modern-day Peter and Max to childhood Peter and Max, and the two tales come together in quite the climax. The beautiful dark illustrations by Steve Leialoha help tell the tale and make me want to read the rest of their graphic novels. Anyone who can make Peter Piper marry Bo Peep and have them both be trained assassins is an awesome author in my eyes! ( )

As a fan of the comic series I had high hopes for this book. Further expanding the Fables legacy with a closer look at the dysfunctional Piper family.

Peter Piper all grown up now and married to Bo Peep learns that his evil brother Max (Pied Piper) is back in the world of the mundy's and set out to resolve their argument once and forever.

It is an breezy enjoyable read that mixes folklore with some modern day settings as it flits from past to present telling the story of how the Piper brothers got to be such adversaries.

Highly recommended. ( )

I've never read the "fables" series, but this book has made me a fan. It is an easy and entertaining read. I enjoyed reading a book that included well-known childhood fairy tale characters like Snow White and Little Bo Peep. In this story, the author focuses on the adversarial relationship between Peter Piper and his brother Max. He does a wonderful job of keeping the reader interested and engaged. I was entertained from beginning to end. I look forward to reading other fable stories. ( )

Peter & Max is a prose novel that takes place in the universe of Willingham’s Fables comic series. The series is based around the premise that characters from folklore have a physical existence; that they are, in fact, a magical race of beings from an alternate reality. When a cruel conqueror takes over their own world, the Fables seek refuge in our own, where they live unnoticed in a corner of New York City they call Fabletown. Peter & Max begins with Peter Piper (of pickled pepper fame) living peacefully with his wife Bo Peep in the countryside. One morning Peter learns that his brother Max (another Piper, whose name you may not recognize but whose reputation you certainly know) is in town. Unfortunately this is not a happy family reunion, as Max and Peter happen to be mortal enemies.

I love the Grimm fairytales, and I love creative retellings. I thought Peter & Max was a nice example of the genre and thoroughly enjoyed it. Characters that are sinister in traditional lore are sinister here as well. Characters who are traditionally innocent or heroic show surprising new sides. This is not to say that any of the characters seemed particularly complex--they were not-- but there was still something fun and clever about the way Willingham weaves them together in his story. The action felt well-paced, even as it switches back and forth between time periods. The book also gets a small thumbs up from me for the delightful line drawings peppered throughout the text. My only complaint is that Willingham’s writing style seemed somewhat prosaic and uninspired to me. He tends to tell rather than show, something quickly evidenced by the six page introduction which describes the background of the Fables universe in detail. I have not read the comic series, so I am one of the people this intro is supposed to convenience. Frankly though, I like exposition in a fantasy novel to be a little more gradual and natural. Willingham’s “info dump” method left me feeling that he either lacks the skill to do this, or that he assumed his readers would have such poor reading comprehension they wouldn’t be able to put the pieces together themselves.

Overall, I expected a pleasantly entertaining, light read, and Peter & Max met my expectations.

Dave Eicke:
I’ve been consuming Bill Willingham books with regularity for a few months now. The series I’ve been reading from DC Comics is called Fables, and it takes characters like Snow White and Cinderella and Pinnochio and King Cole and drops them in present-day New York City, where they have their own little subculture among the non-magic “Mundies” like us. (That’s short for “mundane,” of course.) The reason I’ve been able to plow through these 9 books so fast is that they’re graphic novels, and short ones at that.

The Fables series has been so successful that they’ve done one spin-off already: Jack of Fables. Now, apparently, it’s time for a second…and it will be something absolutely crazy: a PROSE NOVEL! From DC Comics! This will be their first foray into the medium, and will be a standalone story centered around Peter Piper, of tongue-twister fame. I’ve been waiting to read this for a long time. Based on the quality of the storytelling in the graphic novels, this one is sure to be a quality book.