Princess Academy by Shannon Hale, 2007

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Miri lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have quarried stone and lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king's priests have divined her small village the home of the future princess. In a year's time, the prince himself will come and choose his bride from among the girls of the village. The king's ministers set up an academy on the mountain, and every teenage girl must attend and learn how to become a princess.
Miri soon finds herself confronted with a harsh academy mistress, bitter competition among the girls, and her own conflicting desires to be chosen and win the heart of her childhood best friend. But when bandits seek out the academy to kidnap the future princess, Miri must rally the girls together and use a power unique to the mountain dwellers to save herself and her classmates.
(314 pages)

I'm in a reviewing slump, because I haven't read anything I cared enough about to review lately. So what do I do when I need to have a review up in two days? I turn to my old favorites and choose one I know like the back of my hand. I haven't read Princess Academy in a long time, but it really doesn't matter because I've read it so many times that I could review it in my sleep. I won't, though - I'm wide awake right now, I promise!

Why do I love Princess Academy so much? Part of it comes from exposure, I guess. I read it for the first time when I was seven, and fell in love with just about everything about it: the mountain, the "magic," the ending. The main reason I love Princess Academy, though, isn't just exposure to it at an early age - it's the story, and the characters, and the setting, and just about everything else. 

I love Miri for her sense of humor, her intelligence, her strength . . . and her weakness. Miri feels inferior to the other villagers because she is small and physically weak, and her father won't let her work in the stone quarry with the majority of her neighbors. Growing up on the outskirts of the quarry, spending her days with the young, the old, and the physically handicapped who can't work in the quarry, Miri has developed a sort of inferiority complex. She hides her insecurities and her loneliness by cracking jokes and teasing others, hiding herself so completely behind a facade of lightheartedness and confidence that no one suspects how unsure of herself Miri really is. I love watching Miri throughout the book as she learns not only how to read and write (though those are obviously important too!), but also how to believe in herself and to positively affect the people around her.

I also love the other characters. Peder, Britta, Esa, Frid, Knut, Lars, even Olana - they all have unique personalities, unique motives for acting the way they do, unique reactions to the formation of the Academy. Britta is my personal favorite because she begins as a minor character but becomes more and more prominent as the book goes on. Her story deserves a novel all to itself! I also love Peder for the whole childhood frienship/loyalty thing between him and Miri, and I love Katar for what makes her so desperate to win the prince's heart. Steffan is one of my favorite characters because he's more than just a cartoon-prince only good for acting as the author's trump card in the princess competition (like, "I want XYZ to marry the prince, so Steffan picks her even though that wouldn't make an sense!").

This review is becoming too long, so I'm just going to stop. I could keep going, though, listing off every single character in the book and why I love them. I could also talk about the Heidi-esque setting, and the awesome side-plot about linder (which is the stone they quarry), and the theme of familial love that runs strong through the veins of Princess Academy. Instead I'll simply summarize the rest of my review like this: It's one of my favorite books. Ever. And you need to read it.

And if you already have read it? Read it again. Then (though this is less urgent) read the sequels - here's a link to my review of the third book in the series, The Forgotten Sisters.

Princess Academy: The Forgotten Sisters by Shannon Hale, 2015

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After a year at the king’s palace, Miri has learned all about being a proper princess. But the tables turn when the student must become the teacher!
Instead of returning to her beloved Mount Eskel, Miri is ordered to journey to a distant swamp and start a princess academy for three sisters, cousins of the royal family. Unfortunately, Astrid, Felissa, and Sus are more interested in hunting and fishing than becoming princesses. As Miri spends more time with the sisters, she realizes the king and queen’s interest in them hides a long-buried secret. She must rely on her own strength and intelligence to unravel the mystery, protect the girls, complete her assignment, and finally make her way home.

(323 pages)

This is the second of the two books I won from Bookshop Talk's giveaway in early March. When I was  picking out my books, I immediately knew I had to get The Forgotten Sisters because my library doesn't have it. I mean, what kind of library doesn't get the third book in an extremely successful/popular trilogy? I swear the people who run my library don't even read.

Anyway, I just finished this third and final entry into the Princess Academy trilogy with a smile on my face! I've been reading these books for a long time (for about as long as I've been able to read, actually), so finishing the trilogy is rather bittersweet for me. On one hand, I'm very relieved that things ended on a high note - both in terms of the story and of the quality of the book itself. I was deathly afraid that it would turn out to be just a cheap knock-off of the first book, but instead I found that it brought the story arc through a beautiful full circle, until everything and everyone was brought back to where they began.

While I can't say that the plotting is air-tight and fast-paced (because it's not), I can say that this isn't really a high stakes thrill read that requires such careful plotting. It's a book that was meant to have a slower pace, so you can enjoy it more thoroughly than if you sped-read through the whole thing on tenderhooks. There is danger aplenty, and worries galore, but it is at its core a book about brains, not brawn. It''s one final adventure with our beloved characters, a last hurrah of sorts that gives us a final chance to admire their bravery and intelligence before seeing them get their happily ever after.

While this may be one reason for the final book, the novel still offers up a compelling story of its own. Miri must learn to survive in the swamp, adapting to a new world all over again as she moves from the capital city Asland to this swamp in Lesser Alva. The threat of war with the kingdom Stora hangs over Miri and later the girls. The king of Stora is a thrice-wed seventy year old. How can one of these spirited young women tie themselves to such a man in a loveless marriage? Yet if they don't, peace will fail and thousands will be slaughtered in the war between the two kingdoms. It's a huge quandary, and I have to say I love the way it was resolved (sorry, no spoilers!).

At the end of the day, this is a good book. If you've read the first and/or second book, then please pick up The Forgotten Sisters and read its engaging tale for its own sake, as well as the closure it brings to the series. If you haven't read Princess Academy, then go read it! Right now! It's an amazing book, even as a stand-alone. Please don't read this book first, though, because it just won't be nearly as interesting without all the backstory you can only get by reading the earlier books. 

The Forgotten Sisters is a great book, and I'm glad to have read it. I'm also extremely glad that I own it, so I can re-read it whenever I want! I know I'll definitely be revisiting this one soon, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Edit 6/1/15: Click to check out my review of the first Princess Academy book.