Book Review: Prince of Glass and Midnight

I am such a sucker for the Disney Prince series. The books by Linsey Miller take some of Disney’s quieter princes — that is to say, those without much of an in-movie arc of their own — and fleshes them out by sending them on an adventure concurrent with the events of their movies, one that also gives them more time with the heroine of the story, fleshing out their romance a bit as well.

The latest in this series, Linsey Miller’s Prince of Glass & Midnight, as the title suggests, follows Cinderella’s Prince Charming, here known as Prince August of Charmant. In an attempt to both do right by his kingdom and avoid his father’s attempts to marry him off, August heads to the village of Fresne, one he used to visit as a child, to investigate a strange spell overtaking the residents. There, he is aided by his friend Martin, and his childhood friend Ella. Yes, the novel chooses to make Ella and August childhood friends, and as for how that impacts the ball, well I won’t dare spoil that for you.

This one, in my mind, had the biggest hurdle to clear, since of all the fairy tale retellings, Cinderella is possibly the most common of them, and has seen its fair share of iconic adaptations. The challenge is then, how will this one be different and stand on its own. Miller achieves this by not trying to fully reinvent the wheel. The novel has a lot of winks and nods to other iconic Cinderella adaptations, and also fills in some gaps and does its best to answer some of the more bad faith critiques of the story — including “why doesn’t she just leave them?” and “why doesn’t he recognize the girl he danced with?” as if suspension of disbelief isn’t part and parcel of a fairy tale. Miller’s answers to these questions, though, don’t read as a “so there” so much as they do a natural progression of the story.

Prince of Glass & Midnight is out now.