The Fairest series is supposed to highlight the secret histories of the female Fables. This volume tells the story of Nalayani, a young girl in an Indian village. The men in her village have left to fight the goblin invasion and now no one is able to protect the village from the dhole. Nalayani seeks the help of the Maharaja, but all is not as it seems. In her travels, she runs into Prince Charming. In a way this volume closes off the Prince Charming story line from Fables.An interesting story,

I've really enjoyed the Fairest series so far. Willingham creates great heroines and giving them to others to write is an excellent idea. Some of his off-shoots haven't been as strong as his main series, possibly because he's doing so much!WIlliams does a a great job of writing within the Fables universe. He has a similar style to Willingham and creates the right blend of story-telling with a modern angle. This story sees the return of Prince Charming, moonlighting as an Arabian prince. But the

Prince Charming leads the way in Eastern Indian fable and possibly finds true love for a change. OVERALL GRADE: B to B plus.

I believe I've read almost everything set in the Fables universe, including the all of the books in the Fairest series. Unfortunately, Fairest: Return of the Maharaja is the weakest volume I've read to this point. The Fairest series is supposed to star the female fables, but I feel like we didn't get a fully fleshed out heroine in Nalayani. Perhaps part of the problem is that most readers will not be familiar with the Nalayani's tale from Indian folklore, but even beyond that, I really felt that...

Wasn't the point of the Fairest series for the books to be about the women fables? This book is mostly about Prince Charming, who is a great character, but I'd rather see him in the regular Fables title. And for a land of nearly all women, only two women have names and one of them dies due to sex. Really?

Having been a fan of the Fables series and its spin-offs, I found this volume to be disappointing. Mind you, it's not that I hated the story itself. It was interesting to see Prince Charming again, and the story he had for this book. However, this series is meant to explore the characters of various women. I LOVED the one about Sleeping Beauty and thought it was bloody clever. The one with Rapunzel was not quite as good, but I still enjoyed it.I was not familiar with the character of Nalayani as...

The Return of the Maharaja actually hails the return of Prince Charming.You didn't really think he was dead, did you?Some Spoilers ahead! He's managed to set himself up as the Maharaja in a world somewhere and is availing himself of all the luxuries that sort of lifestyle provides. <--think haremsWhen a beautiful woman comes to ask for his help to save the village she's been fiercely protecting for years, he agrees - thinking this will just be another adventure and another notch in his belt.Not

We find out Prince Charming is alive in this book. It starts out being about a woman in a village and it quickly just becomes being about Prince Charming is who called the Maharaja. I love the Fable series and it's offshoots, but this story didn't seem to have a whole lot of point to it and it felt more like filler. Basically, it's just 'eeh'.

Is Prince Charming supposed to be a bad guy now? Because that is how he is written. I love and own all the Fables, Jack of Fables and now Fairest. I don't really write reviews, but I wanted to warn people off of this. Don't waste your time. This isn't about women. This is about how Charming treats women. You won't miss any useful information and it is so poorly written, I can't believe it is part of the Fable's universe. It doesn't fill in any gaps about what happened to Charming. And the new fe...

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through Goodreads First Reads.If this volume had focused more on Nalayani instead of Prince Charming I'm sure it would have been much better. Don't tell me about Prince Charming, I'm not here for Prince Charming. Why focus on yet another male character that only comes close to seeing women as individuals when he thinks they're worth being called a challenge? Also, nice that he sacrificed himself in Fables and managed to end up in a world wit...

Well, as with the second volume, this lacked the spirit of the main series. Different writer, an easily forgettable artist and, for a series about the women of fables as it clearly says on the back cover, it gave a whole volume on a male lead, prince charming. Didn't mind to find out what happened with him though, i had a lot of doubts about him dying in the first place. :P

Like the previous volume we have a non-Caucasian Fable world yet Willingham has to have a European lead! It's a tad annoying to be honest, as it does not leave enough room to expand on the Indian Fable universe, of which we learned even less than we did of the Japanese one in the previous volume (Fairest, Volume 2: The Hidden Kingdom)! Still a nice Fabletown-esque story and ultimately a very respectful and interesting use of a character from the sacred text of the Mahabharata. As per usual, ther...

This volume of Fairest is quite different. The lead isn't even a princess. But she is a Warrior Queen in her own right. Nalayani undertakes a dangerous mission to seek help from the Maharajah to save her village from man-eating monsters and encounters a dispossessed Prince from the Land of the Fables, the one and same Prince Charming. Ever the opportunist, Charming takes advantage of his exit from Fabletown, after making an enormous sacrifice in the war against the Adversary. Nalayani isn't his

Charming arc indeed!So yes if the cover didn't give it away the blurb in the back will, this is the story of Prince Charming's return. The complex character that people love and also hate at the same time gets a tale all his own, of course this being a Fairest titles, the story focused on Nalayani and her interaction with Charming, how was it? Quite good. World: Jimenez's art is detailed and kinetic, but for me it took me a while to get into the groove of it. The framing is nice and clear and th...

I'd give this four stars if it wasn't part of the FAIREST series. For a series that's supposed to be about the female fables, this book was ALL ABOUT Price Charming. Fables genius lies in telling these ancient folk tales in new, modern ways. This book of the FAIREST series was all re-tread. Writing women as people shouldn't be so hard. But apparently, it is. The art, however, is amazing. Jiménez FTW.

Fun storytelling featuring a great female protagonist and great art by Sadowski and the Fables art team. Color art seems dusky over the pencil and ink grey tones, maybe appropriately so.Recommended.

I don't hand out bad reviews very often, and especially not one star reviews, but I have to join on the dog pile of negative reviews for this volume of Fairest. For a series concentrating on the female Fables this volume did a poor job portraying interesting and strong women.First of all, the main female, Nalayani, isn't even a Fable, she's just a civilian living in a Fable land. With a rich tapestry of Indian/Hindu Fables/tales/gods to pull from, I have no idea why the author focused on a commo...

This one was..weird. As so many others have said, Fairest series was supposed to focus on the female characters of Fables, but this one was more about Prince Charming. This one is set in a Fables world that is basically India, and focuses more on the Indian culture which was a cool change of pace. But other than that the story seemed to have no direction. Prince Charming has set himself up as a maharajah, and he covets a warrior princess who just won't fall prey to his charms. Then Sinbad shows

3.5 stars! While I did enjoy the story for the most part, I feel like it's out of place for this series. The original concept for the Fairest spinoff is that it will focus on female Fables. And that's not the case for this volume. Yes, there is a badass female character and her backstory was explored a bit, but this is still undeniably Charming's story. And also what's up with the (view spoiler)[instalove??? I don't know, it just seemed out of character eventho Charming does have a history of fa...

Yes, there's a strong female protagonist, but let's not kid ourselves, this arc is really all about Prince Charming, which makes its inclusion in a title about female Fables rather puzzling.