Scottish Play Doe (please just call him Scott) has always been a little weird, what with his migraines that make him see really strange things, but everything in his life gets a lot weirder when his family moves to Goodborough (home of the GoodCo Cereal Company) and one of his hallucinations steals his backpack. And then it turns out he hasn’t been hallucinating at all: he can see things no one else can, and oh yeah, that includes cereal mascots that might actually be faeries… and they’re all on the run from GoodCo itself.

With the help of his new friends Erno and Emily (who have their own weird connection to GoodCo), plus Mick the leprechaun, Harvey the rabbit man, and a suspiciously hairy housekeeper named Biggs, Scott has to figure out what’s really going on at GoodCo… and how to save the world from one seriously sinister cereal company.

(Mild spoilers within.)
Although I never got around to Rex’s second book, Fat Vampire, Rex was on my list of authors to watch after I finished The True Meaning of Smekday a few years ago. And considering the two books, I feel safe in saying this: Adam Rex is a very entertaining writer and illustrator, but his Achilles heel is definitely pacing.

Something was distinctly off about the way the tension in Cold Cereal built, and I think it comes down to the fact that there were about three different books in this book. Basically, in this one (very long for middle grade) novel, you’ve got way too many elements at play: a creepy cereal company, some Irish/Celtic mythology, time traveling King Arthur, freemasons, and more. And that is just… a lot. Too much. They are all cool ideas, and they tie together eventually, but it also becomes kind of a jumbled, confusing mess. And, because there are just so many elements that need to be pulled together, getting all the pieces in play, moved to where they need to be, and set up for the climax, takes a lonnnnng time, and makes things feel kind of bumpy and uneven.

But on the plus side, a lot of the ideas are really enjoyable and entertaining. Sinister cereal company that uses faerie creatures as mascots? HECK YES. And the time traveling King Arthur idea was really cool. Also, while Scott and Ernesto were both basically everykids, Emily was wonderful — she’s a supergenius, smart enough that she’s figured out a lot of what’s going on before everyone else, but no one believes her, but also smart enough to understand that and deal with it. And smart enough that when her brother tries to make her feel better for being a social outcast, she doesn’t really want to hear about it. She knows people don’t like her and she doesn’t want to be condescended to about it, frankly. That was a small piece of the story, but a great touch.

Overall, the book was enjoyable. There are a lot of good gags and Rex’s tone is funny and entertaining. But when I got to the end and realized that it’s the first of a trilogy, instead of jazzed for more, my reaction was, “How is it POSSIBLE that there’s more???” So, while it has the same pacing issues as Smekday, it doesn’t deal with anything deeper than the surface story the way Smekday did. thus Cold Cereal gets three cupcakes.

(Note: I was given an advance copy of this book by my personal ARC fairy. It actually goes on sale next week, 2/7/12.)

[Rapunzel's Revenge: LibraryThing - Goodreads | Calamity Jack: LibraryThing - Goodreads]

Rapunzel has lived her whole life in the villa of Mother Gothel, never permitted to look over the surrounding wall. But when she finally catches a glimpse outside, she learns very quickly that Mother Gothel – who, it turns out, is not her mother at all – is a tyrant and the world outside is in need of a hero. Gothel imprisons Rapunzel in a tower – a tower that does something very weird to her hair – but she’s underestimated Rapunzel, who soon breaks out, teams up with a hapless thief named Jack, and sets off across the badlands of Gothel’s Reach, determined to rescue her real mother and bring Gothel down.

In Calamity Jack, Jack and Rapunzel returns to the city of Jack’s birth, from which he was forced to flee after a mishap involving a beanstalk and some giants. Now one of those giants has the city – and Jack’s mother – in an iron grip. With the help of an addlepated inventor and a cunning pixie, Jack must free the city from Blunderboar’s corruption, and prove to both Rapunzel and his mother that he’s more than just a common thief.

I absolutely loved the new Disney movie Tangled. And all of my comic book friends I’ve said that to have said, “You’ve read Rapunzel’s Revenge, right?” But I hadn’t! Not until my BFF Margot gave me both volumes as a Hannukah present, whereupon I promptly devoured them both on the subway home.

The Rapunzel books have pretty much everything I like: A redheaded semi-orphan protagonist with a cheerful, can-do attitude who won’t stand for injustice. A cocky thief with a heart of gold who’s constantly wavering between cunning badassery and adorable failiness. Feminist revisions of fairy tales. Westerns. Steampunk. Hilarity. Partners falling in love. High adventure! It’s like a personal love letter to me.

Of course, having all the things I like wouldn’t mean much if the books weren’t also, you know, good. Luckily, they’re excellent. The plotting is fast-paced and exciting, the dialogue is witty, and the characterizations are beautifully developed. The way Rapunzel grows into her own abilities in particular is wonderfully done, and her relationship with Jack is fairly standard, but adorable. The villains are nicely scary, and there was a twist in the second book that I legitimately didn’t see coming.

The art was also excellent. I like the draftsmanship a lot, and the coloring, but what really struck me was the composition. Some pages I had to just stop and admire the layouts and the skillful ways the writers and artist managed to get enormous amounts of storytelling into each panel. There’s a definite improvement between Rapunzel’s Revenge and Calamity Jack, but both books are really object lessons in how a perfect marriage of art and writing can create absolutely seamless storytelling.

Finally, wonderfully, the cast was racially diverse. That shouldn’t be such a surprise, but it was. Jack is Native American (or whatever the analogue in this fairy tale world is), but it doesn’t define his character or his family history in any way – he’s an urban baker’s son. It’s just his heritage. The different groups that Rapunzel encounters out west in Rapunzel’s Revenge are from a wide array of ethnicities (plus dwarves and giant sea serpents). It doesn’t take away from the fairy tale setting at all, which is the usual objection to a diverse cast – it enhances the Old West and urban settings of the books.

As you might imagine from all the gushing I just did, Rapunzel’s Revenge and Calamity Jack get five cupcakes. If the Hales decide to do another Rapunzel book – or, you know, any other graphic novels – I will be all over that.

After Gen’s bragging lands him in the king’s prison, the chances of escape look slim. Then the king’s scholar, the magus, needs the thief’s skill for a seemingly impossible task — to steal a hidden treasure from another land.

To the magus, Gen is just a tool. But Gen is a trickster and a survivor with a plan of his own.

(I usually write my own summaries of the book, but that was the official copy for it. It was pretty much perfect.)

One of my BFFs got me this one for my birthday, because she knows me very, very well, and if there’s any character archetype I can’t get enough of, it’s the fantasy rogue — and Gen, the eponymous thief, is a shining example. He’s a first person narrator, and his POV is delightful; he’s wry and intelligent and arrogant. Very much my fictional type, so the book was a lot of fun to read, even though it took quite awhile to get going.

The world building is also really fantastic. It’s vaguely Grecian, a fantasy world with a pantheon of gods and intricate mythology, groves of olive trees, and several kingdoms caught up in various intrigue. The richness of the world alone makes me want to read the rest of the series at some point.

That said, the reason this book didn’t rate higher for me is because I actually didn’t love parts of the ending. That’s super spoiler-tastic, though: show

That quibble obviously doesn’t bother most other readers, and fair enough. There are a lot of great things in this book, and I certainly think it deserves its awards and praise. I probably will pick up the rest of the series at some point, so from me, it gets a very sold three and a half cupcakes.

Simple goose girl Alexandria should never have given the old beggar woman the last of her food. The woman turned out be her fairy godmother, and now Alexandria is the most beautiful girl in the world, with tears of diamonds and hair that shakes out gold dust – and trapped in a tower by an evil King and a foolish Prince, both of whom want to marry her. With the help of her geese, she escapes, but she still has to overcome ogres, wicked baronesses, and a decades-long conspiracy if she wants to reach her happily ever after.

I read this on the recommendation of my friend Mackenzie, and she was totally right – it’s incredibly charming. I love fairy tales, and this has all the rhythms of one while being rather tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing; every flouncey speech that came out of the characters’ mouths made me laugh.

There’s actually not much to say about it – it’s just straightforwardly good. Alexandria is a likable protagonist; she’s clever and brave, but also has a tendency to think too highly of her own cleverness and not listen to other people. The Prince – who turns out to be perhaps not as foolish as Alexandria originally thought – is a big lovable sweetheart, and the villains are nicely threatening. The reveals, too, are well-paced so that you gradually twig to the big twist just before the characters do, which is always ideal.

I feel like I should be saying more about this book, but really it’s just a fun, fast read with a good heroine, and I highly recommend it for some light reading. Four and a half cupcakes.

High school student Ellie’s life is fairly normal, until she agrees to help out with a play at the local university, thanks to the urging of her best friend, Kevin. But someone else in the play has her sights set on Kevin – someone not quite human – and suddenly Ellie finds herself navigating the world of the New Zealand supernatural armed only with a magic mask and the help of the mysterious Mark (on whom Ellie just happens to have an enormous crush). As Ellie discovers that the mythology of her homeland is all too real, she finds that that selfsame mythology is threatening to destroy New Zealand – and that she may be the only person left who can stop it.

(Full disclosure: Karen is actually a friend of mine. I shall do my best to review without bias!)

There are two striking things about this book that set it apart from 99% of the YA fantasy lit out there. One is, of course, the setting. Guardian of the Dead isn’t just set in Karen’s native New Zealand; New Zealand informs everything about the book – the culture and geography, of course, but more importantly the magic. No tired dragons or vampires here – the fantasy element in Guardian takes the form of beautiful, terrifying, fairy-like patupaiarehe and powerful, sea-serpentine taniwha, and creation myths star Māui and Hine-nui-te-po instead of Zeus or Odin. Everything is carefully explained for the benefit of clueless readers like yours truly, but the explanations are smoothly integrated into the plot (and there’s a helpful note from the author at the end for further clarification). While this may feel info-dumpy to people familiar with Māori mythology, it was all fresh and fascinating to me.

The other aspect of the book that really struck me was its determined inclusiveness. The cast is remarkably diverse: Ellie, being white, is distinctly in the minority, though there are mixed-race characters who “pass.” Kevin is of Māori descent; Ellie’s sort-of friend Iris is of Chinese descent; Ellie’s favorite teacher is black; and the ranks of minor characters are filled with people of varying ethnicities. And it’s not glossed over; race is something Ellie thinks about and is careful to be politically correct about, and the different cultures she interacts with have a direct bearing on her life, in both mundane and extraordinary ways. Furthermore, Kevin is asexual, marking the first time I’ve seen an explicitly asexual character in a YA novel, and Ellie’s older sister (who doesn’t appear in the book) is gay. It shouldn’t be so remarkable that this book represents the diversity of real life in a way that most literature – hell, most media, full stop – doesn’t do, but it is, and Guardian should be commended for being inclusive without ever taking away from the narrative.

Aside from that, the book is just really good. Ellie is believably teenage, self-conscious and uncomfortable in her own skin, but simultaneously extremely self-reliant and unafraid to stand up for herself or speak her mind, a difficult balancing act for a protagonist. Her romance with Mark had me almost embarrassingly hooked, cooing over all their little moments together and hoping for a happy ending. Her developing friendship with Iris, and Iris in general, really pleased me, since I love to see narratives of female friendship handled well. And the fantasy adventure itself is exciting and very, very scary, scenes of sheer horror bursting through a general ominous storm cloud of something wicked this way coming.

My only quibble is with the somewhat odd pacing of the book. For the entire first half, the terrifying villain is Reka, a patupaiarehe woman. Then, abruptly, we discover that all of the patupaiarehe are trying to destroy New Zealand, but Reka’s okay. We’re suddenly left without a face to latch onto as regards the patupaiarehe threat, but at the same time introduced to Mr. Sand, a thoroughly creepy sort of vampire of magic who serves as an excellent villain for the rest of the book…except he has nothing to do with the patupaiarehe. If Mr. Sand had been introduced earlier, or the patupaiarehe given more specificity instead of being just a big scary something, it would have eased the transition from the first half to the second; as it is, they feel somewhat disjointed.

That said, Guardian of the Dead is still an exciting, scary, fun read, and I enjoyed it very much. It gets four and a half cupcakes, and I’m off to go bug Karen about letting me read her next book. Wish me luck!

Because Theodosia’s parents work at the London Museum of Legends and Antiquities, Theodosia spends a lot of time around quite a lot of very cool ancient artifacts. The only problem is that most of these items come into the museum with curses on them, and Theodosia appears to be the only one who can see the curses. When one particularly curse-heavy artifact is stolen from the museum, Theodosia must recover it, along with her brother Henry and her new pickpocket friend Will, before the whole country is flung into war.

I picked this up in Target because it was cheap, and because spunky Victorian girls and Egyptology are things that intrigue me. I then proceeded to not review it for, like, eight million years at least. So that’ll give you an idea of how much of an impact it made on me. A lot of the details have been lost in the canyons of my mind since I read the book, but let’s see what I can remember:

Theodosia is a pretty decent heroine, and her two sidekicks perfectly respectable sidekicks. The villains were sort of random and disconnected, and the red herring villain’s red herring-ness was never adequately explained.

The prose was quite charming Victorian pastiche, but the chapter endings were dreadful. Almost all of them felt more like LaFever had paused for a bathroom break than because there was a real break in the narrative; the first sentence of the subsequent chapter almost always seemed like it could just have followed the last sentence of the previous chapter without interruption.

One of the motifs of the book is that adults, particularly Theodosia’s parents, don’t listen to her. I know that often adults don’t listen to children, and have certainly been there myself, back in my graham cracker days. And there are narrative where it works well (Count Olaf’s triumphant “Adults never listen to children!” in the Series of Unfortunate Events film is marvelously chilling). But here I just found it unbelievably frustrating and, quite frankly, it made me hate Theodosia’s parents, who never hear a word she says, whether it’s plot-related or not.

The end was a little bit of a letdown, because the war the heroes are trying so hard to prevent is…World War I. So, um, sorry, guys. Your triumph will be short-lived. It’s just hard to celebrate with them through the lens of history.

All in all, Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos was a perfectly serviceable but un-noteworthy book, and so gets the middle-of-the-road grade of three cupcakes.

On his 11th birthday, Will Stanton learns that he not merely human; he is the last of the immortal Old Ones, destined to protect the world from those that would destroy it. Since time immemorial there has been a constant struggle between the forces of the Light and those of the Dark. Now the Dark is rising, gathering for a final push, and the chances of stopping it for once and for all rest with a small group of children: Will, youngest of the Old Ones; Simon, Jane, and Barney Drew, powerless but clever and resourceful; and Bran Davies the Raven Boy, with a secret magical heritage of his own.

I originally meant to read this entire series before the movie came out, then do a sort of comparative review of the two. In 2007. Oh well, the best laid plans, right?

I really liked Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book in the sequence, which was about the three Drew siblings searching a tiny island in Cornwall for the Holy Grail, with some guidance from their Great-Uncle Merriman. I love books about plucky British children on holiday, and books about working out magical puzzles by following clues, and books about Arthurian legend, and this had all of that in spades.

The problems arose in the second book, when Will, the protagonist for the rest of the series (well, he splits point-of-view chapters with the Drews in the third and fifth books, but he’s really the main character of the whole sequence), took over. Now, I like Will just fine, as an 11-year-old boy. Unfortunately, glimpses of Will-the-11-year-old-boy are few and far between in the series. We see far more of Will the Old One, who is just kind of boring and pompous and unrelatable. He views humankind with a sort of distant, patronizing fondness; there’s no immediacy between Will and the reader or Will and his friends and family. One book features a mortal whose life is put at stake by Merriman, another Old One, as a sort of failsafe magical device, and when the mortal realizes how willing Merriman was to sacrifice him, he is deeply hurt and winds up betraying Merriman. Will and Merriman show very little understanding or sympathy towards the mortal, or anger or hurt at his betrayal, just vague but tolerant annoyance at the inconvenience of the whole situation. It’s this sort of reaction that makes Will, except for those rare moments when his normal boyish self shines through, a cold and somewhat unlikable narrator.

This isn’t helped by the fact that the series suffers greatly from…it’s not even a case of telling, not showing. Things just are, with no proper transitions or growth on the part of any of the characters. Will is given a book to read early on; the reader doesn’t get to see any of the content, but it instantly teaches Will how to be an Old One and use his powers and basically helps him change instantly from a confused little boy to an untouchable god. It’s incredibly unsatisfying; we never get to see Will learn or grow. To a lesser extent this happens throughout the series: characters suddenly know things for no reason, or instinctively trust or distrust people because they just do. The whole thing reeks of deus ex machina.

In general, the more vague and mystical and grandiose the books got, the harder it was to follow them or relate to them. When Cooper kept the books on a more human level, they were far more compelling. This is why the Drews are more successful characters than Will; it also applies to Bran, the troubled Welsh boy of mysterious parentage who is introduced in the fourth book. The Drews and Bran can be confused, or scared, or petty, and it’s their moments of all-too-human peevishness that make them interesting and likable.

All that said, the books are enjoyable. The prose is absolutely lovely, some of the best I’ve read since we started this blog. The passages describing Cornwall and Wales in particular are like poetry. The mythology is really well-done, although only Arthurian in the broadest sense. And the climaxes are all exciting and high-stakes. So it wasn’t like I didn’t like the books. Just, you know. Will. (Sometimes.)

In light of that, and in light of the fact that these are classics, and a lot of the problems with the books have only become annoying tropes years after The Dark Is Rising helped blaze the trail for modern kids’ epic fantasy, the sequence gets four cupcakes. Not bad!

Charlotte and Zee have had enough Greek god-based weirdness in the past few months to last a lifetime, but they know they’ve got more coming, especially when their mortal enemy Philonecron gets his hands on Poseidon’s trident, and gets it in his head to take over the universe. Now Philonecron’s wreaking havoc, Zeus is seriously considering eliminating humans entirely, and Charlotte and Zee have to sort through a secret society, an ancient weapon, and a prophesied “secret son” before they can even think about hurdling the final obstacle: Mount Olympus itself.

I posted about the first two books in this trilogy, The Shadow Thieves and The Siren Song, waaaay back in the early days of this blog, and waited quite a long time for this one to finally see print. I won’t really go into detail about the basic plot/prose/character stuff, because I already said it in the earlier review, and all of it still stands: the prose and pacing are uneven and the villain isn’t great, but the take on the gods is often laugh-out-loud funny, and Charlotte and Zee, the protagonists, are completely lovable.

What Ursu added with this book was a lot more soul-searching, and attempts at some sort of deeper theme. Unfortunately, there’s kind of way too much of it. Charlotte and Zee spend an awful lot of time harping repeatedly on concepts that never bothered them before (Charlotte feels guilty about worrying her parents, Zee feels passive and guilty about endangering Charlotte), and while it’s certainly likely that these feelings would come up after the events of the first two books, the fact that they never thought about them before and are now completely preoccupied with them, going on for pages and pages about the same thing over and over again, is frustrating for the reader.

Ursu also seems to be, as I said above, looking to pull out a moral or three, but it’s more just sort of grabbing at any moral in reach than a clear progression. There’s a lot of discussion of ends and means, and whether the sacrifice of one person is an acceptable price to pay for the salvation of humanity. Ursu’s conclusion is very clear: no, if you’re sacrificing someone else; yes, if you’re sacrificing yourself. While that’s certainly a common conclusion and not one that I necessarily think is wrong, I kind of wish the other side had gotten the chance to weigh in more. Maybe it’s because I was reading the TVTropes pages for The Spock and The McCoy right before I read that part of the book, but I think the idea that the needs of the many sometimes outweigh the needs of the few is a fair position to take, and I wish it had been considered instead of instantly rejected. (Again, I’m not taking a position myself, I just think it’s a debate that deserves equal arguments from The Spock and The McCoy before The Kirk makes a decision. Also, I’m sorry for linking you to TVTropes, and I’ll meet you back here to finish the review after you spend three hours there.)

There’s also a lot of talk about the difference between justice and revenge. Fine, great, awesome, no problem. Except, well. It’s pretty spoilery, but show

And there’s the question of knowledge, and free will. Our heroes are seeking the fire of the gods, which Prometheus originally gave to mankind; if they use it, all of humanity will be aware of the gods. The Prometheans, a secret society dedicated to protecting the world from the gods, are also dedicated to keeping the gods a secret, which they figure is the same thing. Charlotte asks why humans don’t have a right to know, and never gets an answer. Then…okay, sorry, another spoiler: show

These are all interesting questions. I have no problem with any of them, or all of them, being present in the book, but I do have a problem with the way they were handled, and the fact that they sort of rambled all over the place, crashing into each other willy-nilly. I really felt like the book could have used some serious streamlining in the editing process.

All that aside, I did enjoy it. Like I said, parts of it were very funny, and I adore Charlotte and Zee. The actual adventure parts of the plot were exciting; I didn’t want to put the book down, which is always a plus. And the very real love Charlotte and Zee have for each other hit me right where it counts, so points for that. (I have a weakness for cousins who live in the same house and are best friends, especially if they are a boy and a girl. It is a very strange, specific weakness, I know.)

The Immortal Fire certainly had its problems, but it was a fun book, and so it gets three and a half cupcakes. Not bad!

After Ai Ling’s father disappears, strange things start to happen. She begins to develop strange powers, like the ability to hear people’s thoughts. But when a local merchant tries to blackmail her into marriage, she runs away and vows to bring her father home. But as she searches for him, something evil is searching for her…

I picked this book up because I’m making an effort to delve into sf/f novels not set in Ye Olde Fake Europe, since so much of fantasy centers around Western-style (and very white-washed) worlds and myths. But I probably would have picked it up anyway, since it’s a story about a teenage girl discovering a super power and saving the day. That certainly falls into the category of “things I love.” And those two things sum up the book’s major strengths: the world, and Ai Ling as a character.

The world of Silver Phoenix is great; it’s a high-fantasy take on ancient China. I’m not familiar enough with actual Chinese culture to know how accurate it is, but it’s certainly rich enough that I’m not concerned. Everything from the bizarre creatures Ai Ling runs into to the noodle shops she eats at make it distinct and genuine. It is very refreshing to read a book where the well-worn fantasy tropes are reimagined — and while they presumably aren’t new to readers who grew up with Chinese mythology, I (like, I would guess, most American readers) was raised pretty strictly on high fantasy and Western traditions, so this is all new and fresh to me. And the writing is lovely to boot; while at times a bit passive for my taste, it paints simply gorgeous pictures.

As for Ai Ling, it took awhile for her to really come into her own, but overall she was an awesomely active hero. She’s smart, both well-educated and clever; and while “young girl who doesn’t want to get married,” is basically a stock character, Ai Ling herself is not stock at all. Her fear of marriage — and of sex in particular — is very well-handled. She learns how her powers work quickly and is not afraid to use them, so we see her develop from determined but nearly defenseless into someone who can handle her own in a fight. And she’s actively feminist; there are several times in the book when she contemplates how women in her society are relegated to inner chambers, to being wives and mothers, and not supposed to have adventures like the kind she is experiencing. And the book makes it very clear that even when she is rescued by her companions, Chen Yong and Li Rong, she is the protagonist, and ultimately it’s her story. Ai Ling gets an A+.

All that said, the book had a few weak points, too. Through the book, I kept waiting for an explanation of where Ai Ling’s powers came from, for some real backstory about her past life and about the villain. That was sadly lacking; you learn she had a past life, and that the villain is a seriously bad dude, but that’s about it. This may be something being held off for a sequel, but it left the book feeling a bit awkward and lacking.

The other thing that left me scratching my head involved a subplot with Li Rong, and involves a major spoiler: show

But those are just minor things. The book moves a bit slowly, but picks up a lot in the second half. But the strong points far outweighed the weak ones, and since this was a debut novel, I can only imagine good things from Pon in the future. Thus, I will probably pick up more of her work when it comes out, and Silver Phoenix earns four cupcakes.

Every night, the twelve princesses of Westfalin escape from their locked rooms and go dancing, and none of them will – or can – say where they dance. For his part, with the war over young soldier Galen is happy to work as a simple under-gardener in the palace. But as the lovely Princess Rose and her sisters grow more exhausted and despairing, and the country begins to tear itself apart, Galen must use all of his wits and courage to untangle the mystery of the princesses’ enchantment – and just possibly win the hand of Princess Rose himself.

I enjoyed the first book I read by George well enough, and I always like retellings of fairy tales – not to mention “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” is one of my particular favorites – so naturally I picked this one up. And, well, I commend myself on a wise choice. I mentioned in my review of Dragon Slippers that it was George’s first published book, and it shows; with Midnight Ball her prose has definitely improved in this one, with stronger transitions, and she bothered to give her characters motives and beliefs this time around, which always helps.

I thought the mythology of the book was really well constructed. I liked the setting – a very thinly-disguised early-nineteenth-century Germany, where the original story hails from. Some of the other country names were kind of cheesy (Hispania? Bretona? La Belge? Whatever could those possibly be?), but it was nice to see a high fantasy story with pistols instead of the usual swords-and-hose setting. Plus, the placement in Europe gave George a chance to play with international relations in a way that rang really true, and to bring in the politics of Catholicism and the papacy when the archbishop arrives from Roma (goodness, what country is that?) to excommunicate the princesses for witchcraft, a deeply-felt punishment.

I also thought George did a nice job translating the sort of random events that happen in a fairy tale to a logical modern novel. She gives the princesses a reason to go dancing and a reason they can’t stop, she gives Galen a reason to get involved, and she even ties in the old woman who gives him the invisibility cloak in the beginning of the story, which was a totally contextless happenstance in the fairy tale. The mythology she constructs around the evil King Under Stone feels like real mythology, and the various magic tricks and tips dropped through the book are pulled from real peasant traditions and come off very naturally.

Galen himself is a serviceable hero; nothing about him jumped out at me as extraordinary, but he’s likeable enough. The princesses are a slightly thornier matter. George was sort of hampered by her subject matter here, since twelve is really too large a number to work with, if you want to give them all personalities that the reader will remember. She didn’t help her case by naming them all after flowers. Rose, the oldest and the secondary lead after Galen, is easy enough to remember, but the rest tended to blend together, so that even when I knew that one was pious and one was vain, I couldn’t remember their names. There’s a pronunciation guide in the back, but I think the book would have been better suited by a guide to the princesses.

Moreover…well. Some time ago I reviewed the Twice Upon a Time books by Wendy Mass, and said: “I get that Prince Charming gets short shrift in the ‘originals’…but I have never felt badly enough for him that I wanted to give him fifty percent of the story. That is, fairy tales being what they are, I’m not quite sold on the idea of a revisionist fairy tale that doesn’t devote itself to giving the heroine more.” I didn’t like the idea of splitting the central role of the story between Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty and their respective princes; I wanted the heroine to remain the protagonist.

Now, in “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” the soldier was always the protagonist, but it seems like George made an effort to make Rose more of a central, active figure as well, so it’s a shame that…well, she’s kind of not. I mean, the princesses have no agency. They are forced to dance because of a bargain their late mother made, they are completely incapable of freeing themselves from the spell, and even in the (sadly lackluster) climax, Galen does pretty much all of the work. The only plan Rose comes up with is a bad one that they wind up stopping halfway through. At least in the original story, the princesses wanted to dance, and got rid of the guards watching them themselves. Here the princesses just drift aimlessly through the plot. It wasn’t quite enough to put me off the book, but I wish they’d had more to do.

Still, all in all Princess of the Midnight Ball was an enjoyable, well-constructed read. Four cupcakes.