I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: June 2014] The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

Holy cow, did I love this audio book!

I was looking for an audio book that the kids would enjoy on a long car ride.  The title sounded terrific and when I saw that it was read by Bronson Pinchot, I didn’t wait another second to download it.  And yes, Pinchot’s reading was stellar and amazing, but in addition, the story was hilarious and fantastic.

And I’ll get out of the way that the book is completely kid-friendly.  There’s nothing objectionable (the harshest word is crud).  Some of the violence is cartoony (and Pinchot makes it pretty visceral) but it doesn’t last long.  My nine-year old and six-year-old were just as hooked as the adults.

This book aims to set the record straight about Prince Charming.  Prince Charming is of course in every fairy tale, but you did know that they are not the same Prince Charming, right?   Those lousy bards who created the songs about the female leads certainly got the Princesses names correct, but they never bothered to get the Princes’ names into the songs.  (Charming is an adjective, not a name).  So, meet Prince Liam, Prince Frederic, Prince Duncan and Prince Gustav. They’re the Prince Charmings (actually it is Princes Charming–the book is very much a stickler for proper grammar), who saved–Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel, respectively.  And they are out to make names for themselves or at least make their names known.

Each one of them starts as an outcast for a different reason.  The only thing I found confusing about this story was trying to keep the kingdom names straight.   So I’m trying to outline them here.

STURMHAGEN: Prince Gustav, the guy who “rescued” Rapunzel, was actually thrown out of the castle and blinded–he regained his sight because of Rapunzel’s magical tears, and he has been unable to look her in the eyes since.  His family is also not impressed by him.  Gustav is the youngest of 17 boys (the detail s of his family are hilarious).  Each of them is bigger and stronger than he is (even though he is a brawny 6 foot 5 inches tall and super strong).  But he never seems to be able to get any respect from anyone in his family.  And that bard’s song has just made everything worse.  He is angry, and man does he hate the bards.

HARMONIA: Prince Frederic, the Prince who seeks Cinderella, turns out to be, well, pretty dull.  He is afraid of everything (his father raised him to be afraid of everything, mostly by keeping a tiger who attacked him whenever it could–true the tiger was toothless, but it was still terrifying).  So Frederic is not interested in doing anything but wearing the nicest clothes and being proper.  But it turns out that Ella is a dynamo.  She is bored by Frederic’s life and longs to go out and have an adventure.  And when she hears of something suspicious going on, she hightails it for excitement.

SYLVARIA: Prince Duncan is a kind of dopey, hippie free spirit.  He actually happened upon Snow White (of YONDALE) and kissed her because he was told that he would be setting her free.  He and Snow are married, but Duncan is such a free spirit that he often wanders off.  It turns out that no one really likes him.  He has no friends, even Snow White’s dwarves don’t think much of him.  So he spends most of his time naming every animal that he sees.

ERINTHIA: Prince Liam awoke Sleepy Beauty, whose name is Briar Rose (of AVONDELL).  But he refuses to marry her because she is a truly horrid and awful person.  But because he refuses to marry her, he is outcast from his family (who want the merger of their kingdoms for financial gain).  Liam is meant to be with Sleeping Beauty because when he was four years old, he defeated a couple of assassins, thereby showing off his innate hero-ness.  And so everyone looks up to him for his planning skills.

All four Princes Charming set out for their own reason, but they soon meet up, empathize with each other and become friends.  And, after some smaller adventures, they wind up becoming The League of Princes.  And they set out on a quest that…  Well, let me interrupt to talk a bit more about the style of the book.

What’s so enjoyable about the story is the tone the narrator takes.  Like the way the book opens: “Prince Charming is afraid of old ladies.  Didn’t know that, did you?”  Or how about this, later in the same Prologue:

If we were to peek ahead to say, Chapter 20, we would see our heroes in a small mountain town called Flargstagg sitting in just about the worst tavern in all creation: The Stumpy Boarhound….  Of course, by Chapter 20 , you can’t fault the Princes for looking like wrecks.  They’re lucky to be alive after their run-ins with the witch, the giant, the bandits, the–well, you’ll see.

After that prologue you’re either completely hooked in, or you’ve lost interest.  But if you’re hooked, be prepared for an exciting and very funny story.

So what about that plot? Well, the beginning of the book more or less flashes back to the earlier exploits of the princes and explains how the bards got everything so wrong.  We meet each of the Princes individually as they go from possible hero to probable outcast.  And then, before Chapter 20, of course, they all meet and agree to work together.  Initially, the quest is to save Ella, whom they believe has been captured by the evil witch Zaubera.  Zaubera is the witch who locked up Rapunzel, and now she has Ella.

But Ella was on a mission to rescue the bards. It turns out that Zaubera was capturing all of the kingdom’s bards, because she knew that the people would all be devastated without their witty songwriting (and because the bards sure made her look bad too).  The bards have awesome names like Pennyfeather the Mellifluous, and as we saw earlier, they aren’t known for the fact gathering.  So Ella has found one of the bards and plans to rescue him.  But he is being guarded by a giant (named Reese).  Reese is actually a pretty nice guy, he’s just doing a job that he doesn’t really like (he works for Zaubera), and she is able to talk him out of doing mean things–his return later is fantastic.

While this is going on, the Princes start to realize a few things about the bards as well, and they decide to take it upon themselves to be heroes and rescue them (even Gustav who hates them).  Along the way they run into a whole smattering of interesting characters, like Troll, Troll, Troll and Mr. Troll (trolls are vegetarian, thankfully).  They also run into the Bandit King, whose name is Deeb Rauber, the most feared and notorious Bandit in the land.  What a shock to find out that he is related to, well, I won’t say.  It’s even more surprising to find out that he is only, well, that’s too funny to give away.  Suffice it to say that their encounter is at once menacing and hilarious.

There’s some Dwarfs (um, Dwarves) who are very cranky, and some goblins who are very scary.  There’s a dragon (who is kind of sleepy).  And there’s also Ruffian the Blue, the world’s best bounty hunter.  But tailing him is Lila, Liam’s sister, who is all of twelve.  She proves to be a formidable tracker herself, even if Ruffian feels like he is babysitting her.

All of this is hilariously done, with inept plans from the princes, with the princesses helping out in various ways and with a wonderful assortment of supporting (and unsupportive) characters.  The best part is that I haven’t even mentioned the final devastating plan that Zaubera has constructed for all of them.

Man, did we all love this story very much.

And, of course, Bronson Pinchot made it absolutely come to life.  For the main characters, he has created these very distinctive voices:

Gustav is an over the top German fighter
Frederic and Ella are British nobles
Liam, Lila and Briar Rose are fighting Irish
Duncan and Snow White are California Hippies (his female voices are also wonderful).
Mr Troll is an inhuman guttural voice
Reese is a voice I don’t even understand how he made
And Deeb Rauber is, well, he’s my favorite voice of all

Supplement these voices with the dozens of other characters–lispers, spitters, thugs, brutes, witches–and you have an amazing cast, which I find hard to believe one man could create.  I almost have to wonder if I would have enjoyed this book as much if I had read it rather than heard it.  (Which is not to take away anything from the story, which was outstanding, just that Pinchot is truly amazing).  He must have easily 45 voices at his disposal.  In addition to creating so many voices for all of the characters, his narrator voice is perfect–inflecting, winking at us, making the jokes leap off the page.  It’s tremendous.  We actually wondered if Christopher Healy was as thrilled with the audio as we were–did he feel like Pinchot brought the whole thing to life?

I was so thrilled to find out that there was a second and yes, a third book in this series.  In fact, we just listened to book two on our recent car trip.  And it was awesome, too.  So thank you Christopher Healy for writing such an amazing story.  Please do keep up the great work!

Because we didn’t read the books, I can’t say anything about the art, but it looks pretty great.