Fair peril Book

Fair warning - I'm not a fan of "silly" books. If I'd read a bit further in the sample before purchasing, I probably wouldn't have bothered buying or reading the book. If you do like humorous books, feel free to ignore the rest of my review.

This is a re-telling of The Frog Prince told in very symbolic and humorous terms. There's some wonderful, wonderful parts in there - for instance Buffy's storytelling - and some great points (like the idea that a woman being put up on a pedestal and worshiped can be a form of prison) but the silliness annoyed me.

The portrayal of men really annoyed me too. Is there a male equivalent of the Bechdel test?

When the ex-husband is informed that his 16 year old daughter has run off with a older man, his response is "Oh, well, that's fine. I used to go for young women too." WTF?! The book being stylized and symbolic makes it worse, because if the ex-husband is meant to be the Jungian archetypal male, then that's less than flattering of the male half of the conversation. The one somewhat tolerable male turns out to be gay. Sigh.

Really, though, with the overall silliness of the whole book and the overall obnoxiousness of ALL the main characters, I suppose the over-the-top obnoxiousness of the men shouldn't annoy me. But it does.