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Middle Grade Book Reccs: The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom (and Writing Update)

First, the writing update. I've been trying to restrain myself from jumping into the final revisions of the next full-length book in my Faerie Queen series (Guyon and the Quest for the Golden Mean) because I'm trying to finish writing some nonfiction for my day job. Of course, that means my creativity has to come out somewhere else... 

I've been working on a short (?) story about Arthur's older brother, Sir Kai, which I plan to serialize in my newsletter as soon as I get set up with a newsletter service. But the story just keeps GROWING. Kai has already acquired a raft of personal baggage based on the old Welsh legends about him, plus several Faerie curses and a sidekick who may be trying to kill him. (Kai wouldn't be all surprised about the trying-to-kill-him part. It would be the fact that this individual thinks of themself as his sidekick that he would find puzzling.) I'm guessing the story will be novella-length at least. So Kai the Coldheart, coming soon!

shield of Sir Kai, after Arthur becomes king

And now on to the review.

I'm a big fan of funny adventures with over-the-top characters. Christopher Healy's The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom and its sequels are some of my old favorites! 

The series stars four princes who all (to their annoyance) have gotten labeled as Prince Charming ("Do we not get to have our own names now??!!"). After they get rejected from their own fairy tales, they form a band of brothers and go off to fight fairy tale villains, figure out what they want to do in life, and maybe win over some princesses after all.

Cover, The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

I've laughed so hard at these books. Princes Duncan, Liam, Gustav and Frederic are all extremely different from one another--they each want to solve problems in their own ways and they want different things in life--so there is a lot of bickering, but they also grow as people over the course of the series. The art is absolutely hysterical. Highly recommended!

Ages: 9 and up

Christian? No.

Other books in the series: The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle, The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw

Cover, the Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle


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