The Unhandsome Prince

This book is billed as a spoof on fairy tales, and it is certainly that. The humor sucked me in, but oddly enough, I found I was disappointed when it was over, not so much because the jokes were done, but because I liked the characters enough. I say "oddly enough" because the interest of most humor writing is not characters. After reading "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy," for example, when you stop laughing, you don't particularly want to pal around with Arthur or Ford; but you might, with Caroline, Emily, and Hal in this book. At least I felt that way.

I think the reason is that, silliness aside, you find that the main characters are in fact quite admirably moral: the kind of people you really want good things to happen to.

As other show more reviewers have noted, some of the humor is a bit dark, but not all of it. And even in the dark parts, where the characters are making questionable moral choices, one can still see why someone might actually do that without being evil at the core. Fortunately, that was only a relatively minor part of the plot. show less

Handsome is as handsome does.
Surprisingly entertaining, but definitely YA, no younger, thus points subtracted for the childish cover. Characters do wrestle with their choices, but still in a stylized fashion. It’s a fascinating mix of fairy tale tropes and modern sensibilities and realities. Thus, when Caroline, after methodically sifting the swamp for 7 weeks and finally finding the correct frog, has an unhandsome prince, she threatens to sue the estate of the sorceress who spelled him.
Particularly good bits with the philosopher’s stone, which endows the holder with certain thoughts, and with Bungee, the city’s most respected sorcerer.
Prince Jeff rivals Price Hal as my favorite. He specializes in honorable actions in the everyday show more world. show less

This is the first book I’ve read by John Moore, and had actually stumbled upon it by accident, though am glad to say that I did find it.

It starts out with a young girl kissing frogs in order to find the one that transforms into a handsome prince. Though, as I’m sure you can guess from the title, the prince isn’t exactly what one would call handsome. In fact, he’s what one would call rather geeky. (Not that geeky is a bad thing at all. Not at all.)

I found the narration to be very witty and the characters extremely sarcastic. While it was completely predictable, it didn’t change the fact that the book was exciting and kept me reading. The only real thing that didn’t seem to sit too well with me in regards to the characters in show more this book was that they were using phrases from modern culture when it was supposed to take place back in the day. (Could you imagine a fairy tale prince’s older brother talking about getting himself a piece of ass? No, I didn’t think so.)

I found the last two chapters to be very rushed, however. It seemed as if Moore had just thrown them together at the last moment instead of taking the time to actually write what was happening. It had the feeling that after the big climax, he just went right to an epilogue and explained what happened in the next few weeks. As well, it left a loose end or two – he mentioned something about how the spell around the prince which caused him to be a frog didn’t have the feel of magic to it, so therefore it couldn’t be magic, but didn’t explain anything further, which I have to admit, am curious to see what the magic going on in the story actually was.

All in all, though, I always really enjoy books that take a number of fairy tales and tell a story revolving around them, and have a feeling I will be looking into Moore’s other books, in the case that they are as enjoyable as this one was. show less