4.5 Stars. A big thanks to Net Galley for the ARC.
Once again Jessica Day George has proven that she could write the contents of a cereal box and I would read and love every word. Having devoured both "Princess of the Midnight Ball" and "Princess of Glass" I could not wait for this next installment.
This time, George uses "Little Red Riding Hood" as her template for the tale of the twelve princess sisters who were doomed to dance due to an unfortunate contract with an evil king who had entrapped their mother. Of course, her original story used "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" as the bones of her tale and the second was loosely based on "Cinderella". As a lover of the Grimm tales each one has been irresistible.
However, the success of these novels lies with George's ability to spin a fully engaging tale with characters the reader cares about. She writes believable romances that begin with friendship and contain a healthy amount of mutual respect. This is refreshingly different from the desperately unhealthy "Twilight" clones. Gender roles are challenged without being overly heavy handed. Some of the male characters knit. The princesses are good with a pistol. Both of these factors are important to the story as a whole and feel very natural within the context. I love that.
While this book deals with some very potentially dark themes such as the implications of a forced marriage and emotional slavery, George brushes over them in a way that preserves the urgency of the princesses' situation and yet could be easily read by middle grade readers.
The few complaints I would have about this novel are actually minimal. Mainly, as in the first two, I found it a little difficult to keep all the princesses straight. This isn't so much the fault of the author as that it is a problem with the amount of princesses called for by the original tale. Twelve girls all with names of flowers. Each of the books shifts its focus to a different princess. The first one was Rose, the eldest. The second, Poppy a middle princess. This final one was mostly the story of Petunia, the youngest. This leaves nine other girls who run together in your mind. To be fair, Lily, the second eldest has been fleshed out the most but beyond that we know that Jonquil is pretty, Orchid wears glasses, there is a Pansy and a Lilac. I recall Hyacinth being referred to as religious in the past two books, but that seems to be missing in this one. Mainly, I complain because I love this world so much I would be happy to spend time with more than one princess per book to get to know them better.
The second complaint was that this novel gave the promise of explaining the origins of the curse of King Understone. I would have loved to learn more about the crone and her doomed king. I wish I could have learned what the exact nature of Queen Maude's contract with the evil King. These things are a lot to ask and may have weighed the story down with a lot of unnecessary text. Really, the ending might have felt a bit abrupt but it didn't ruin my enjoyment of this novel.
I would happily recommend this series and this author to fantasy lovers grade 5 and up.
