I picked this book up during the National Fairy Tale Day
festivities last week, and I’m so glad I did!
I’ll definitely be reading more books by Marshall.
This full-length novel retells “The Princess and the Pea”
with an epic twist. Waking up from an
enchanted trance in which she battled invading goblin forces and sealed them
away from the world of men, Lina finds that a hundred years have passed. She arrives at the Aeonian capital just in
time to be accidentally included in a Princess Test.
This generation’s Princess Test is very important to the
kings of Aeonia. The royal family came to the throne
under suspicious circumstances about eighty years ago, and now the King of
Gaveson is threatening to annex the country unless they marry into an old royal
family from one of the other nations.
Now twenty princesses and noble ladies—all under strict orders not to
reveal who they are or which countries they came from—have arrived to meet
Crown Prince Alaric and undergo the Tests.
Being included in the Tests gives Lina access to the Council
of Kings. She needs to speak to them, as
her magic has revealed that there is still danger of a goblin invasion. Unfortunately, no one believes in goblins any
more…
High Points
Lina is competent, smart, and determined, and she quickly
makes friends with the other princesses.
I loved her!
When I read the blurb for this story, I noted the “prince
must marry for the good of the kingdom” plot trope and groaned internally. It wasn’t a surprise—this is “The Princess
and the Pea,” after all—but I’ve gotten very tired of it. The princes usually moan and groan about
their situation, but instantly forget their resistance when they first see the
eyes/smile of that special someone… But
Marshall’s story was not like that AT ALL.
Instead, we have Prince Alaric, who is determined to do the responsible
thing and marry for the good of the kingdom despite the protests of his father,
brother, and stepmother, who all think he should marry someone that he actually
likes. He’s actually way TOO responsible,
which is something I’m have a lot more sympathy for than the usual princely (or
princessly) whining. He’s great!
There are also half a dozen secondary characters who add a
lot to the story. Alaric’s brother Stefan
and stepmother Marta, the valet Bastien, Carina and the other princesses in the
Princess Test. I’m so glad that this
book is part of a series—I just know we’ll get to see more of these characters.
Critiques
Sometimes I felt like the fairy-tale tropes and the epic
fantasy tropes were a little too obvious.
But for the most part Marshall does a good job of weaving them together
into a single plot in a coherent setting.
Bottom Line
Well worth reading! I’m
looking forward to the rest of the series.
One quick note in my role as a copy editor: I didn’t find a
single typo or grammatical error while reading.
(This has never previously been my experience with a self-published book.) As someone who compulsively checks grammar
and has been known to pencil in corrections for the grammar/spelling mistakes in
library books (…sacrilege, I know…), this makes me very happy.
You can find the book here.
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