Princess Academy
The Princess Academy series, Book 1
Shannon Hale
Bloomsbury
Fiction, MG Fantasy
Themes: Girl Power, Mind Powers, Schools
****
Description
From the high, stony slopes of Mount Eskel, the locals cut slabs of the miraculous stone known as linder, using their unique abilities to "listen" for suitable
beds beneath the slag and "feel" where to place each blow. Man and woman, boy and girl, everyone in the village works the linder quarries... all except the old, the
crippled, and Miri. An undersized girl, her father forbade her from setting foot in the quarry pits since she was old enough to walk. She can only listen to them
singing their working chants, catching the odd fragment of telepathic "quarry-speak" used to communicate amid the deafening din of hammer and chisel, and pretend that
it doesn't hurt to be left alone.
This world of slag and quarry, of snowbound winters and short, sweet summers, is all Miri has known, but Mount Eskel is just one tiny corner of the vast kingdom of
Danland, a fact she is unexpectedly awakened to when a royal messenger arrives. The prince of Danland must have a bride, and the priests declared she must be found
among the villagers of Mount Eskel. So, by royal decree, all the proper-aged girls must attend a special Princess Academy in order to train them up from impossibly
backwards mountain girls to worthy company for a sophisicated lowlander prince. In one year, Prince Steffan himself will travel to the Mount Eskel academy to choose
his bride at a special ball, to be attended by successful graduates only.
Miri never thought she'd want more than to tend the goats, help her family, and maybe, just maybe, earn her father's trust to work the linder stone. Like many in the
village, she distrusts the Princess Academy's stated goal, as no lowlander prince would ever consent to marry anyone from her backwater home - as if any sensible
mountain girl would want to leave Mount Eskel and live among such arrogant people anyway! But royal decree brooks no argument, so Miri and her friends find themselves
herded off to a makeshift school headed by a disagreeable lowlander teacher. As whole new worlds open before her at the academy, Miri starts to wonder if perhaps she
really would be happier seeing other sights, traveling to other lands... perhaps even, in her wildest of dreams, wearing a royal crown.
Review
On the whole, I found it a good book. The simple act of learning opens doors before the mountain girls; each reacts to their transformation differently, from distrustful indifference to wild-eyed hunger. The potential prize of a crown, even if it means marriage to a strange lowlander, also brings out the best and worst in the girls Miri knew - or thought she knew - all her life. If Miri should perhaps have been quicker on the uptake about several people and ideas, if she might have realized a bit sooner just who her real friends might be and what their true motives were... well, then she's no more Plot-Conveniently slow than many otherwise clever young adult fantasy heroines. The story itself throws in some unnecessary hitches and kinks to draw out the length, leading to a fairly obvious conclusion, but some of the other consequences of the Princess Academy were slightly less obvious and somewhat more satisfying to read. I almost smell the faintest hint of sequel potential, here, as hidden aspects of the linder stone and the mountainfolk's ties to the land come through.