A True Princess

My Diane Zahler reread continues!

While The Thirteenth Princess was a retelling of a fairy tale, A True Princess is more of an original story. The tale of The Princess and the Pea is at its core, but it's so wrapped in layers of other things that it doesn't feel like a simple retelling.

A True Princess also involves the Danish/German Erl-King, who is called the Elf-King here, and his daughter. These are trickster-type characters, who take children and humans for their whims.

Then there's Odin's Hunt, Yep, Odin himself is in here, although he's not proclaimed to be a god.

The Norwegian nisse also makes an appearance.

The story is set somewhere the Northern Lights appear.

The names are decidedly Northern European. Lilia is Russian, amongst other things. Kai is Finnish, Swedish, German. Karina is Scandinavian and Russian. Tycho is Greek, but has versions in Scandinavia. Ylva is Swedish.

So it's a hodgepodge of different fairy tale elements set in a vaguely Northern European setting.

It's a pretty fun story. Lilia was found floating down a river in a basket, which was later discovered to be a falcon's nest. She's raised alongside Karina and Kai by their father and cruel stepmother. When the stepmother plans to sell Lilia to the miller, she runs away, but is quickly found by Kai and Karina, who won't stay on the farm without her.

On their travels, they get lost in a dangerous forest, where they encounter the Elf-King and his spoiled daughter, who claims Kai as her own. Lilia makes a bargain. If she can find Odin's lost cloak clasp, the Elf-King will take it in exchange for Kai and all the other humans that have been taken over the years. The Elf-King's daughter says it is in the nearby palace.

Lilia and Karina become servants in the palace and search for the clasp, while Karina is falling for the prince. This is where the test from The Princess and the Pea comes in.

I'm not going to spoil anything, but Lilia saves the day, of course. It's another nice, quick read, though I enjoyed The Thirteenth Princess more. Lilia is a fun character, but beyond her, the other cast isn't as developed as I would have liked. Zahler gave better treatment to the supporting cast of The Thirteenth Princess than she did to this one.

The Thirteenth Princess

The four Diane Zahler fairy tale books were some of the ones I rescued from my old storage area in Florida this past spring. I put them under my coffee table in my stacks so I could reread them and I started recently.

I know I need to be working on the Disney Twisted Tales, but those are bigger, nice hardcovers that are a pain to hold while eating, so I also have smaller books for mealtime reading!

The Thirteenth Princess was written in 2011. Amazon notes that I bought it in 2013. Not sure how I came across the Zahler books. Possibly a suggestion from Amazon? Or perhaps through Yvonne Gilbert's stunning cover art? Although her work for the old Time Life Enchanted World series is even more beautiful.

The Thirteenth Princess is about...yes, you guessed it...the Twelve Dancing Princesses. Zita, the main character on the cover, is the thirteenth and youngest. The king was obsessed with having a male heir, so the queen kept popping out kids. Little blonde girl after little blonde girl. All of Zita's older sisters are varying shades of blonde with eyes in varying shades of blue. So naturally, Zita has to be the odd one out, although she's a lovely green-eyed redhead, which is hardly that odd.

Angry with Zita for doing the old kill your mom in childbirth trope, the king banishes her to the kitchens and she grows up as a servant, not knowing who she is. She spends a good chunk of the book discovering her identity and hanging out with her sisters in secret. Then it becomes clear that they're under an enchantment and it's up to Zita, her stableboy almost-boyfriend, his older brother who's in love with the eldest blonde sister, and their witch friend to rescue the sisters and conquer the person who put the spell on them.

The reveal of the bad spellcaster is a bit random. There weren't the usual hints leading up to it. It's more like "Oh, okay, I guess that's possible."

I like all the good characters, although I do wish the book was longer and fleshed out the twelve sisters more. The eldest, Aurelia, gets the most characterization, but she's still lacking, because her main quality (aside from beauty) is being depressed because she's in her late twenties and unmarried. More is actually revealed about each sister in a section in the back of the book, which explains their name origins and tells a little about them.

It's a fun, quick read for those interested in fiction that experiments with fairy tales.