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.

BSC Graphic Novels: Boy-Crazy Stacey

The seventh offering in the BSC graphic novel series takes on the original series' eighth book, leaving #2 Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls as the only one not covered. It's Mary Anne's turn next, so I'm wondering if we might meet Logan soon!

Anyway, Boy-Crazy Stacey follows Mary Anne and Stacey on the Pikes' annual trip to the small beach town of Sea City, New Jersey. It's your typical beach town with a boardwalk, etc. but I always love stuff like that, so those elements were great.

The main plot is Stacey ignoring her charges to flirt with Scott, a lifeguard that she thinks likes her back. I haven't read the original book in forever, but I just used Google to fact check and Scott was 18 in the book. Here they've lowered his age to 15, which is a more reasonable age for a crush, and he's way less of a dick. No sending Stacey on random errands. They just talk.

This one isn't anywhere near as hilarious as Kristy's Big Day or as emotional as Dawn and the Impossible Three. It's a bit of fluff, but hey, at least we get out of Stoneybrook for a while. Not that we've seen much of it yet...

My only real gripe is that Mallory is now a BSC member. They moved those events up in the graphic novels. But while she isn't here as an official babysitter, she could still be in more scenes with the older girls, as they're supposed to be actual friends now. They've changed the events around a bit, so why not give Mal some more screentime? She needs her own volume, too. And we need Jessi! I want Jessi before the graphic novel series ends, which I hope it doesn't anytime soon.

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.

Disney's Twisted Tales: As Old As Time

I FINALLY finished this book. It came out almost three years ago! I have picked it up, put it down, and restarted it at least three times since then. But I just bought the last one, twisted Snow White, for a low price, so I'm determined to finally catch up on all of these, before the next one comes out on October 1st. Or at least make a concerted effort to get through them. I have three more to do after all.

So for those unfamiliar with twisted tales, the author plays with a concept relating to the Disney movie we all know, and then skews it darker. Both the Aladdin and Sleeping Beauty volumes were quite dark, and this one continues that tradition.

The beginning goes back and forth between past and present, relating the story of how Maurice, Belle's father, and Rosalind, the Enchantress, meet and fall in love. You meet their friends Levi, Alaric and Frederic, all important to the story. In the present, Belle is dealing with Gaston's assholishness and going through what we know from the movie: exchanging herself for her father as prisoner of the Beast.

The past story turns darker as the supernatural people like Rosalind are hunted down or flee the country. The king and queen have turned against them and are harsh, cruel, prejudiced people. The king and queen who are Beast's parents.

I don't want to spoil too much, but you can guess what Rosalind does, and then the story switches entirely to the present, where Belle accidentally destroys the rose, then works with Beast to unravel the mystery of their past. The end is a huge confrontation and the final ending is tentatively happy, not full-on happy, but with a promise of happiness. It's good and I'm glad I finally finished it!

The Anomaly

I picked this up at Goodwill and it was one of my better finds.

This is going to be a short review, because I can't delve deep into this without giving away spoilers.

Nolan Moore is a Youtube armchair archaeologist. He does a show called The Anomaly Files, which is really more of a conspiracy theory, History Channel-type of thing. He has no formal training in anything archaeological. He's an ex-screenwriter.

He and his team are in the Grand Canyon, searching for a mysterious cavern that was discovered in 1909 and then never properly covered. The odd findings reported put it on Nolan's radar.

Nolan is the POV character and he's very likeable. He's a definitely flawed person, but the good thing is that he's also extraordinarily self-aware.

Then we've got Ken, the jaded British alcoholic who's in charge of the whole thing; Molly, his no-nonsense right hand; Pierre, the young, handsome, a little too perfect cameraman; Feather, a New-Agey liaison from their newest funding source; and Gemma, a web journalist who seems more determined that they fail than succeed.

I don't think it's a spoiler to say they find the cavern. And they get trapped in it. From there, rolls out a quite interesting sequence of events that I haven't seen done before or if I did, I sure don't remember it. I really enjoyed this from start to finish. It is a bit of a slow starter, but it's worth it. The end is just action after action and completely makes up for any slow build.

The second book in the series came out this year and I plan to order it Friday.

If you like Preston & Child stuff, try this out. It's a faster, simpler read, but it's still good. The author is a screenwriter and you can tell, but not in a bad way. This thing just screams "make me a movie."

24 Hours in Ancient Athens

Ah, I do love this series.

This most recent installment was written by the same author as the Roman volume, so it's well-written and very informative.

I think I enjoyed this one the least of the three. I'm not even sure why. The Egyptian one I liked, because of the subject matter and despite the terrible editing issues. The Roman one I enjoyed a lot. I enjoyed this, too, just...less so. Honestly, I can't even really say why.

Maybe it felt like the author was trying to cram too many historical people into a single day of life. It felt like constant name-dropping rather than an actual look at daily life. The chapters are nicely intertwined like the past books. You'll see the same people pop up a lot, especially Alcibiades. I swear he's mentioned or actually present in every other chapter.

The best thing is how many of the scenes are taken from actual ancient sources. It feels well-researched and well-written for what it is. I think I just would have preferred a few less big names and more regular people.

Adventurers, Inc. 2

Ah, another dramatic adventure. Of course.

This time Susette is in the POV position and the girls are at the Grand Canyon. They're doing some rafting on the rapids and Susette is worried because she had a bad childhood experience with swimming and is scared of the water.

Once again, we remove the main adult character who SHOULD be there: John, their teacher. He's not going rafting with them because he's too busy visiting an old girlfriend.

The girls should be in capable hands though, because chaperone Debbie's ex-boyfriend is a guide for the river rafting people. So yeah, they should be safe with him.

Except after rock-climbing up for lunch, he and Debbie stupidly let all the girls and their young trail guide Tommy rapel back down first. I don't think this is something that a responsible guide would actually do. The second adult should have gone down first, then the kids, then the last adult.

So when Debbie goes to rapel down, the rope breaks and she's dramatically saved by Jim (her ex). Oh, I should mention that while the girls are having lunch at the top of the cliff, Jim bellows at Rosina for stepping on the rope because it wears it down. Dude, don't yell at kids if your dumb ass didn't TELL them not to do it and why.

Now we've got Debbie and Jim at the top of the cliff and the five kids down below. Tommy gets them back in the raft and they go for help, but there's a spontaneous waterfall. They tried to explain how this happened, but I didn't buy it.

After surviving the waterfall, Toni, Allison and Rosina make it to shore with the raft, while Susette gets caught in a whirlpool. She's rescued by Tommy, but then they have to make their way back to the others, which terrifies her. He gives her and pep talk and they do it, mostly because he's hurt his wrist and needs her help.

They get back to the top and go to Tommy's nearby home for help and everything is fine. Susette feels braver and understands that you can't be brave without being afraid.

There's also the romantic subplot, of course. Tommy and Susette end up a cute little couple. As you can probably tell from the cover, Tommy is half-Native American, which is awesome. So few Native American characters in this type of series. And there's a stupid other plot where the girls think Debbie is going to leave the trip and stay with Jim because she's mad at John, so they spend most of the book badmouthing Debbie to Jim and Jim to Debbie only to get caught at it. And then they see John and Debbie kissing with literally zero build-up to that.

I like Susette as a character and I like Tommy a lot, too. Toni's way more obnoxious this time and she's definitely turned into a Kristy. She's also suddenly not afraid of heights at all anymore, which I find unbelievable. Allison was just kind of there, and I continue to relate to Rosina, who is not at all outdoorsy.

Next up, it's Rosina's turn in the spotlight for a sailing trip around Maine.