*****Intended for older children.

His Royal Whiskers is a darkly whimsical fairy-tale worthy of the Brothers Grimm themselves.

When an alchemy experiment goes wrong, turning the heir to the Petrossian Empire into a fluffy kitten, the bloodthirsty Czar is enraged. How can his son conquer anything as a cute fluffy kitten. And so, the accidental alchemists are charged with making the kitten large, large, large, or it will mean their lives! After much experimenting, they end up with a gigantic cat the size of a dinosaur.

The Czar never gets to see his kitten son acting as a conquering machine. An unforeseen consequence of making Alexander so big takes the life of the Czar. The warlord is having none of it though, and decides to conquer Death Itself. When the dead of Petrossia still live, despite things like being beheaded, or flattened, it becomes Pieter and Teresa’s task to put an end to it, and restore Petrossia’s psychopomp, Grim back to his task of shepherding the deceased to their new lives.

This is a very dark tale, full of wry humour. It harkens back to the bloody lessons of the original Grimm brothers stories. There's magic and wonder, but also death and beheadings, torture and confinement. Despite the title, this book is less about Alexander, and more about Pieter, the mathemagician who serves the Czar as Talleymaster, and Teresa, who takes the place of the royal alchemist- Alexander's two best friends- and all the trouble caused from their alchemy experiments.

His Royal Whiskers, like any good fairytale, has important lessons, such as being aware of consequences. Or that life is rarely fair, and rarely plays out as we expect. Because of Pieter and Teresa's actions, lives are irrevocably altered, or ended altogether. There's the lesson to be grateful for what we do have, and that we should consider the cause behind action and behaviour. The Czar may have been a royal ass, but when you learn his history, you see it is a coping mechanism. That doesn't make it right, but it does make it, and him, easier to understand.

***Many thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. ( )