In this modern-day fable, beautifully illustrated by wood engraver Wesley W. Bates, Russell Smith combines tomance and adventure, and presents fascinating conflicts among art and public policy, elitism and bohemianism.

"Smith's skills as a lyrical poet are on full display here: The fable is freighted with very luscious, voluptuous language that, in and of itself, speaks forcefully to an ideal wherein art is produced by virtue of sheer yearning.... The audacious argument Smith presents here, that art might and likely should take precedence over such "banality" as function or use, is lively enough to engage the average reader of fantasy books or fairy tales (which similarly use the arcana of enchanted stones to seduce us away from the banality of our own lives). It is his with "other worlds," that elevates this charming story, that takes us, like a guided wire, through the author's lusting and boundless mind."

– Globe and Mail

"Smith writes with a quiet elegance, lightly grazing the page with words equal parts magic and touching."

– Ottawa Citizen

“Russell Smith's The Princess and the Whiskheads is a fable, not a novel, but don't let that fool you: this is not a whimsical tale like those collected in Sheila Heti's The Middle Stories. The Princess and the Whiskheads is a deadly serious little book, and for all its fairy-tale royalty and faraway lands, it is a pointed piece of social commentary.
Smith's take on art, countercultures, elitism, and politics is refreshing and amazingly in touch with the current strains of activist youth. The Princess and the Whiskheads is both an entertaining narrative and an interesting social critique. One can only hope that it will gain more than a few sympathetic readers.”

– Amazon.ca

“Smith writes symbolically but what distinguishes his tale is its forthright atheism. Not even Orwell entirely escaped the Christian underpinnings and trappings of allegory to the degree that Smith does, and consequently, no one, to my knowledge, has ever written so erotically in this manner. It's often casually said (especially by the out-of-shape) that the brain is the primary sex organ, but Smith writes his Princess and his Whiskheads into being with absolute conviction that art that is unsexed is worse than trivial. That's why this is worth reading and reading as deeply as the epic of Gilgamesh which also deals with a ruler whose subjects are dissatisfied with their monarch's sexual practices. And it is endearing-at least to the good socialist in me who doesn't think that any great harm befalls those children of the ruling class who are deflected from the paths of industry and progress by artists as crafty as Smith who knows how to turn a screw or a screw-up into works of art.”

– Books in Canada