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Title: Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming by Roger Zelanzny, Robert Sheckley ISBN: 0-330-32132-3 Publisher: Pan Macmillan Pub. Date: 11 February, 1994 Format: Paperback

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Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (11 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: A hilarious view of good and evil
Comment: Azzie the demon has come up with an idea. Every thousand years, there is a contest between good and evil to determine the fate of humankind for the next millenium, and Azzie wins the right to compete for the evil team. This book is one of the funniest that I've read in a while. The obstacles that Azzie faces, such as having to find the right body parts to construct the ideal Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty or having to make do with only one castle because Supply is out of stock, are truly hysterical. You will find yourself rooting for evil to win. I highly recommend this book if you're looking for a good laugh!

Rating: 5
Summary: One of my favorate books
Comment: Robert Zelazny and Robert Sheckley join forces in this tag team satirical take on good and evil. Auzzie is an happily irreverent demon, with all the right corruptions and an evil credit card to match, bent on demonstrating the hopeless fate of the Prince Charming fairy tale in the "real world". The prize at stake is none other then the fate of the human race for the next thousand years. With the assistance of some old aquantencies and the infernal powers, coupled with a Angel who helps out since helping people is a good thing to do; the satire flys fast and furious. Of course Auzzie, being a demon, is not under much compulsion to play fair! Let the misadventures begin.

This book was the beginning of a fairly large number of books I read taking a sideways view of fairy tales and popular stories. I found "Bring me the head of Prince Charming" the best of a very entertaining bunch. Sharper and just plain more fun then Robert Asprin's excellent "Myth-Adventures" series and with a lighter touch then Gregory Maguire's enjoyable "Wicked: The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West" I cannot help but give this book high praise. I would be delighted to find a less tattered copy or other books in this niche. If you have the chance to snap this book up, grab it before I do.

Rating: 4
Summary: A brilliant, very funny novel that fizzles toward the end
Comment: Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming starts out like gangbusters, starts to hit some slow patches midway through, and sort of just fizzles at the end, but it's still a very funny book by the writing duo of Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley. The main character is Azzie Elbub, a demon who finally gets the chance to get out of the pits and go back up to earth, thanks to the Grim Reaper's slightly premature harvesting of a certain soul; even the devil wants nothing to do with lawsuits, so he sends Azzie along to make sure the not-dead guy makes an easy transition back into life. Azzie's luck is even better than he initially thinks, as his return to earth just so happens to fall in the days leading up to the year 1000. Every millennium, the forces of Good and Evil stage a contest to determine who will control the universe for the next ten centuries. Azzie just so happens to have a great idea to pitch to the Millennial Evil Deeds committee. He will recreate the whole Sleeping Beauty-Prince Charming story, but this time evil will rise up and destroy any chance of a happily ever after ending. Having gotten his idea approved and received an unlimited credit card for the purchase of necessary supplies, he sets to work. He needs a good assistant, of course, and a couple of castles, and an Enchanted Forest which simply must have flaming trees and such, and of course he will need a fitting Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty. Here is where the magic of his plan really shines, as he takes parts from different bodies and brings them together in an act of magical creation that guarantees, he thinks, the success of his nefarious plan. Thus, his Prince Charming has the legs of one of mankind's biggest cowards, Sleeping Beauty gets such nifty features as a left arm born for stealing, etc.

Of course, Azzie faces obstacles along the way. His otherworldly suppliers are less than cooperative with his requisition requests, he has to deal with an angel of good overseeing his whole operation (no cheating, even for Evil), and his initial plans for micro-managing the activities of Prince Charming in particular have to be rethought several times over. He does have an old witch flame at his side, and the god Hermes can always be counted upon to give good advice, but Azzie keeps falling into little traps set by little girls wanting wishes, dwarves who don't take kindly to having their precious gems forcibly loaned out, and other magical snares.

Unfortunately, the novel's cohesion threatens to come apart at the seams as the novel progresses. There is never a sense of discontinuity between both authors; rather, it is as if another author failed to deliver his part of the whole story. Transitions become much more rapid and forced, certain minor characters seem to be forgotten along the way, and the climax comes and goes so fast you might miss it. The idea behind the story is brilliant, and the authors clearly start out with the power and will to make it work, but something goes wrong along the way, making the second half of the novel feel forced and unsatisfying. Still, though, there is a lot of fun and laughs to be found in these pages, and the reader's thoughts about what could have been do not necessarily destroy the entertainment value of this farcical fantasy.