Diary of a Teenage Faërie Princess
C. B. Smith
Reviewed by Mary Aycock
Reading directly from the back of the book: “About the Author: Life
for C. B. Smith began in a southern part of the northern hemisphere
where the heavy misted skies threatened to strangle him in swamps of
crocodile infested feculent.” And so we first meet the author of this
wildly imaginative story!
Jaynie is the teenager in the story, but when we first meet her,
she has no idea that she is, indeed, a Faerie Princess. This isn’t
apparent immediately, because we originally see her disguised as an
ordinary, everyday pain in the backside teenager, totally engrossed in
her own problems. Her problem that got the whole story rolling was that
she decided she needed to go shopping for a new pair of shoes. She is
blessed (or cursed) with unusually large toes, digits that in most
people usually stay within bounds and make it easy to find a pair of
shoes that actually fit. But, Jaynie discovers that her particular
digits are making normal shoe buying an impossibility, so she must make
do with her old, ratty tennis shoes until she can find another solution
to the problem.
Then she discovers that the three monkeys next door have stolen
these same old, ratty tennis shoes, which are the only pair of shoes
that still fit her feet. What monkeys, you ask? Doesn’t everyone have
three monkeys living next door? Jaynie sees these same monkeys playing
with her shoes and she tries to find a way into the building to steal
her shoes back from the monkeys. She finds an almost secret door into
the basement of the building and while trying to find her way through
the basement to the monkeys, she discovers a magical trunk. In this
trunk is a picture of her mother, who has been missing for 13 years.
The trunk also bestows upon her the truth about her magical background,
since the picture bears the inscription “To my daughter, Princess
Jaynie.”. She is so stunned with the discovery that she rushes home,
without recovering her missing shoes, to ask her father about what she
has discovered. He tells her that her mother is
a Faerie, not just any old ordinary Faerie, but is THE Faerie
Queen who has been missing for many years. Jaynie decides to play
detective and see if she can discover her mother’s whereabouts and
rescue her from whoever is holding her captive. Jaynie reasons that she
MUST be held captive, or why else would she have not returned home to
be with her young daughter?
Jaynie decides to do an information highway search for information
about her mother and the faeries and the act of trying to do the search
magically brings a helper into her life, one Mad Looney, to be exact.
After a bit of discussion, they are away on a wonderful adventure to
find and rescue her mother. Unfortunately, Mad Looney and others in the
Faerie world can read Jaynie’s mind, while she cannot read theirs. This
leads to many situations that are so funny I had to laugh out loud!
Good thing I wasn’t reading the book in company of others or it would
have been hard to explain my giggles.
Another problem for Jaynie is that no one seems to want to tell her
the whole story about what has happened, nor what is supposed to
happen. She finds that she is the center of many legends that have
happened and many that have yet to be fulfilled. The bad part is that
they don’t tell her before things come to pass. The author not only has
a slippery way with words, but he also has a great and blessed sense of
humor and it shines throughout this story!
Jaynie finds out that she will soon become heir to the throne… when
she turns 1000 in 6 months. She tries to explain that she WILL have a
birthday in 6 months, but it will be her 17th birthday. Here we find
that it is sort of like “dog years”…and that the Faerie clock is the
true clock. She must find a magical sword that will only allow itself
to be handled by the faerie princess of the legends, and with that
sword she must rescue her mother and claim her right to the throne, all
before she hits her 1000th birthday.
Bumbling characters, hilarious characters, characters that will
have you in stitches! This book is peopled with them ALL! But, the one,
unforgettable character is Jaynie, our teenage faerie princess, who
would be queen. Bad guys, stupid guys, guys who haven’t a clue. Yes,
this book has them too! If you want a vacation from the real world and
many hours of laughter and mirth, then you MUST read this book.
Does Jaynie catch the really, really bad guy? Does she ever find a
pair of shoes to fit? Does Mad Looney ever tell Jaynie the WHOLE truth
when she asks him a question? Will Jaynie ever learn to control her
thoughts in front of others that can read her mind? Is she THE one that
can obtain and use the magnificent magical sword of legend? Does she
rescue her mother and do all these other things before the age of 1000?
I won’t give you those answers, because I am begging you to go get this
book so you can find out how it all turns out. Your sides will ache
with laughter and as they say, laughter IS the best medicine! It sure
made ME feel better! *grin*
C. B. Smith, our author, to read a bit more about him, “was
abandoned at birth by Trotskyite revolutionaries, picked up by a wild
crazy eyed trader and transported to a remote Indian jungle where he
was raised by a band of itinerate lion-tailed macaque monkeys trying to
write Hamlet using IBM Selectric Typewriters. Thus began his life.”
And I thought NO ONE used typewriters anymore! I guess if you are
raised by a band of itinerate lion-tailed macaque monkeys, you MUST
retain a sense of adventure and definitely a twist of humor at least 33
degrees off the average! This is our author, and this book is a must
read in order to catch that breath of fresh air that follows him around
his jungle! I completely enjoyed every twist and turn in this marvelous
journey through his imagination! In reading about him, I also found
that he had written a previous book…I am off to find that one now!