This is a very entertaining book. I'm not much of a fan of the Disney princesses, but I'd heard that these princesses were different. And they are. These ladies are quite competent in their areas of expertise. Also, Mr. Hines didn't use the watered down, modern version of fairytales to base his characters on; he used the grittier, older versions. And then he threw in twists.

I expected to not like Cinderella. I don't like her fairytale and in the first few pages of this book she seemed true enough to that tale for me to dismiss her as a twit. But she became my favorite character. Don't get me wrong, nothing the princesses do seems out of character; it's just that Mr. Hines goes deeper into their character and tales to pull out possibilities that previous authors didn't think of. But they aren't super heroes. They are competent, skilled, powerful in their own ways, scarred, and flawed. I was invested in these characters, admired them, feared for them, and loved them.

My only complaint, and it is extremely petty, is that in a couple of descriptive passages there were mistakes that I thought an editor should have caught. In addition to the book being well written, it's extremely well edited. In this day and age when books by well-known genre authors are full of careless editing, I was impressed by the quality of it in this paperback edition. Which could explain why the few errors jumped off the page at me. If that's the worst thing I can say about the book…

I almost forgot to mention the jokes. Throughout, there are subtle innuendos and not so subtle jokes. Some of them are quite adult, but you have to be paying attention.

I love a well-crafted book that is also entertaining. I will definitely be buying the rest of the princess tales as they are published.