December 15, 2014
Miri, as spunky and smart as ever, returns in the final book of the award-winning Princess Academy trilogy. At the end of her year at the titular academy, Miri is anxious to return to Mount Eskel and have her betrothal to Peder proclaimed. On the day of departure, however, the king requests that she travel to Lesser Alva, a swampy outer territory, to conduct a princess academy for three sisters. He hopes to prevent war by presenting them as potential brides for the king of a neighboring kingdom, who's possibly bent on invading. Miri finds herself bitten by snakes, wrestling caiman for food, eating rats and teaching the uncivilized sisters how to be bandits before she can teach them how to read. After uncovering a long-buried secret, Miri is fierce in righting wrongs, showing once again that one person can change the world. In a nice, feminist, concluding twist, a prince academy is established to groom a spouse for the new crown princess. Although not a traditional fairy tale, the ending is a happily-ever-after one. Strong female characters and themes of education, negotiation, family and equality are repeated in this conclusion. Hale maintains her high quality of storytelling, with lots of action, plot twists and lyrical writing. The cover is younger in style than and lacks the gravitas of the previous books' covers. A laudable conclusion to a popular series. (Fantasy. 10-14)
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June 1, 2015
Gr 4-7-Miri is on her way back to wed Peder when the king asks her to educate three unruly sisters. As in the previous novels, Hale keeps the action taut and the young women smart and savvy. Things end happily ever after, with a satisfying twist. A decade after the Newbery Honor-winning Princess Academy was published, this third and possibly final installment in the series will please old and new fans alike.
Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 8, 2005
Readers enchanted by Hale's Goose Girl
are in for an experience that's a bit more earthbound in this latest fantasy-cum-tribute to girl-power. Cheerful and witty 14-year-old Miri loves her life on Mount Eskel, home to the quarries filled with the most precious linder stone in the land, though she longs to be big and strong enough to do quarry work like her sister and father. But Miri experiences big changes when the king announces that the prince will choose a potential wife from among the village's eligible girls—and that said girls must attend a new Princess Academy in preparation. Princess training is not all it's cracked up to be for spunky Miri in the isolated school overseen by cruel Tutor Olana. But through education—and the realization that she has the common mountain power to communicate wordlessly via magical "quarry-speech"—Miri and the girls eventually gain confidence and knowledge that helps transform their village. Unfortunately, Hale's lighthearted premise and underlying romantic plot bog down in overlong passages about commerce and class, a surprise hostage situation and the specifics of "quarry-speech." The prince's final princess selection hastily and patly wraps things up. Ages 9-up.
August 20, 2012
Readers of Hale's Newbery Honorâwinning Princess Academy (2005) will welcome this reunion with Miri and her schoolmates, as they descend Mount Eskel to help Britta prepare for her wedding to Prince Steffan. But while the palace in the capital city of Asland is as luxurious as their imaginations conjured, the working classes are hungry and tired of footing the royal family's bill. Revolution is in the air, and it sweeps Miri, now enrolled at the university, into its wake. Miri is torn in several ways: between two boys, between the educational advantages Asland offers and her home in the mountains, and between empathy for the "shoeless" and loyalty to Britta, who has become the focus of the revolutionaries' wrath. Hale handles these threads ably, although a scene in which the Eskelites stop a villain by using their ability to communicate through stoneâa homegrown talent called "quarry-speech"âhas a whiff of comic-book superhero that feels out of place. Still, this is a fine follow-up to a novel that already felt complete. Ages 10âup. Agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary.
March 1, 2015
Just as Miri is set to return to Mount Eskel following her adventures in Princess Academy: Palace of Stone (rev. 9/12), another crisis demands her attention -- and delays her homecoming. She must first journey to a remote province -- Lesser Alva, little more than a swamp -- and establish a princess academy for three sisters in the hope that one of them will prove a suitable match for a rival king, thus preventing a possible war. As it turns out, the sisters, Astrid, Felissa, and Susanna, are completely uninterested in education, much less stuffy customs or royal betrothal. True to form, however, Miri rises to the challenge, and when war does break out, she and the self-described "swamp rats" flee to the capital, where secrets are divulged, families reconciled, and peace restored. As always, Hale is a terrific storyteller: she deftly juggles plot, character, and setting; her prose is lyrical yet economical; and the themes of feminism and equality that run throughout the trilogy blossom in the resolution of this concluding volume. Readers will be sad to say goodbye, not just to Miri and company but also to Danland itself. jonathan hunt
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