Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming: A Novel

by Roger Zelazny

Overview

A satire of epic proportions from the masters of comic fantasy Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley

People feared, back in the Middle Ages, that the world would end with the millennium. They weren’t wrong. It does this every millennium, only nobody notices—except for the Forces of Good and Evil who vie for control of the universe every thousand years.

Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming concerns the efforts of one Azzie Elbub, demon, to win the Millennial Evil Deeds award for the year 1000, given to the being whose acts do the most toward reshaping the world. Azzie’s proposal to the Powers of Dark is simple: He will create a Prince Charming and a Sleeping Beauty. In time-honored fairy-tale fashion, the prince will fight his way through numerous perils to reach the side of the spellbound princess—at which point Azzie’s evil twist will ensure that the Powers of Dark will win the grand prize. But even with an unlimited satanic credit card to order up any evil he needs, Azzie’s plan is in trouble from the beginning. . . .

“Zelazny and Sheckley make for a synergy that’s just about unequaled in . . . fantasy humor.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553354485
Publisher:	Random House Worlds
Publication date:	11/01/1991
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Roger Zelazny burst onto the SF scene in the early 1960s with a series of dazzling and groundbreaking short stories. He won his first of six Hugo Awards for Lord of Light, and soon after produced the first book of his enormously popular Amber series, Nine Princes in Amber. In addition to his Hugos, he went on to win three Nebula Awards over the course of a long and distinguished career. He died on June 14, 1995.

Editorial Reviews

This collaboration between adventure SF writer Zelazny (the Amber series) and humorist Sheckley ( Immortality Inc. ) is in the Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams mode. Demon Azzie Elbub is representing Evil in the Millennial contest in the year 1000 to see who will control humanity's destiny for the next thousand years. Azzie's entry is a recreation of the Sleeping Beauty story in which Evil triumphs when the princess kills the prince whose kiss awakens her. Azzie is aided by hunchback Frike and witch Ylith, and is observed by Good's representative, the angel Babriel. There are allusions to the Cinderella story, the movie Frankenstein and Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's classic SF novel Inferno , as well as very P. G. Wodehouse-like multiple digressions and old plot elements resurfacing at inconvenient moments. While the premise shows some promise, the execution falters, never becoming as funny as it might. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Frankenstein meets Sleeping Beauty at the end of the millennium as the forces of Good and Evil vie for dominance over the next thousand years of history in this comic effort by two veteran sf/fantasy authors. The plot--in which an ambitious devil attempts to prove that fairy tales don't always have happy endings--is negligible, serving as an excuse for jibes against bureaucracy (the real hell), Santa Claus, and the civilized world. The humor is forced and vaguely second-hand in this less-than-successful collaboration. Not recommended.

Library Journal