Book Review: The Life and Times of Rapunzel

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

The Life and Times of Rapunzel     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Staci Layne Wilson
Class/Genre:   Fantasy   Humorous   Cats
Amber Quill,2003, 192 pp.

Rapunzel feels gratitude towards her rescuer Prince D’arius for she loathes the tower where she was incarcerated until he freed her. She falls in love with her hero, but alas this is not a fairy tale where they live happily ever after. D’arius is a married man. Rapunzel is saddened but wiser to the insincere male world she has just joined.

Rapunzel refuses to let down her hair ever again when the next male in her life, Master Eremis the silversmith, turns out to be as much as a cad as her prince. On the other hand, she feels quite safe with a male cat Hemingway that she finds until she learns that her feline is actually a prince caught in a changing spell. He persuades the kind but still naive Rapunzel to save his people from an evil that wants to destroy them, but to do so they must to travel through time to enlist a help of a twentieth century word wizard sharing a surname and more with the feline prince.

This adult fairy tale will leave readers laughing especially at the puns and other bon mots that would send Sigmund Furred to a littered couch. The story line is loaded with amusing action as Rapunzel gains insight to the road rules of the real world which leads to fans enjoying this facetious follow-up to the Rapunzel tale. Aside to Staci Layne Wilson In an emergency room in Germany, doctors perform surgery opening the stomach of a wolf in an attempt to free a senior citizen swallowed alive while the woman’s red hooded granddaughter walks the waiting room.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner