Author : Christopher Healy
Publication date : Published April 29th 2014 by Walden Pond Press
Some of you may know that I am in love with this League of Princes series! The previous two books were so awesome that they left me in a bad mood because the third book wasn't published yet. When it's finally published, I was reading the last book of A Song of Ice and Fire, so I had to wait for a while before I start reading The Hero's Guide of Being an Outlaw.
The story stars with a news of Briar Rose a.k.a Sleeping Beauty murder case. The friggin bards make the people of the whole kingdoms believe that The League of Princes (Liam, Duncan, Gustav and Frederic) along with their girls allies (Ella, Lila, Snow and Rapunzel) to be the murderers. Meanwhile in the other part of the realm, the ruthless warlord Rundark is plotting to take over the whole kingdom by using the Djin gem that enables the holder to control people's mind.
In short, The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw is not as witty as its two predecessors. It's still funny, but it doesn't really crack me up, which is quite sad because I expect this book to be extremely hilarious. Moving on, there are some interesting new character in this book, Jerica the pirate girl that I wish to know better. Oh, there's also Val Jeanval (err.. female version of Jean Valjean? oh, this name actually cracked me up!) and she's strong, big and loves to pick a fight, just like Gustav.
Though the story concludes really well, I wish there are more of Duncan in it. He's hilariously weird and I don't know why, he doesn't show as often in the book. Less Duncan means humor, ladies and gentlemen and it's not cool. At all.
As this is the last installment of the series, I feel kind of sad. I still want more of the humorous fairytale retelling and I wish Healy would write more of them *fingers crossed*. Oh, here's my favorite quote from the book:
“Wow," a man said. "The song made you sound like an average loser, but in reality you were a horribly pathetic loser.”
4 rating for this book. It has good story less humor (compared to the other two books). I recommend it to all fairytale retelling fans or fantasy lovers. If you are a parent, I think it's a good idea to introduce this series for your children. It's a page turner, perfect to entice them to do more reading.
Your turn now, have you read this series? Did you come across funny books lately? What are they?
