I got The Princess Goes West from the defunct book relay site. The premise reminded me of Alias Jane Smith by Clarence Budington Kelland but the book fell far short of my expectations. The only really good thing about The Princess Goes West is it's length. It's thankfully short.The book starts out as can be expected, introducing Princess Marlena (spoiled of course) and her kingdom of Hartz-Coburg (bankrupt of course). She must either remarry or travel to the United States (why here?) to solicit funds to save her country.Meanwhile, there's a Texas Ranger in town who is a babe magnet and misogynist (every girl's dream) and he's been sent to bring in the notorious Queen of the Silver Dollar. She just happens to look exactly like Princess Marlena (down to the unexplained accent).Cribbing now from Mark Twain (and many others), Ryan sets for a series of unexplained events that forces Marlena and Robbie to switch places. Of course, Marlena ends up in the Texas Ranger's custody! Hilarity and hot dusty cactusy sex ensues for every ten pages for the remainder of the book.Since the dialogue is so full of cliches and the situation so preposterous I actually had more fun counting the pages between sex scenes than I did reading the book. It was a complete waste of about two hours of my life. I only kept reading it to see how bad it would get.
