The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Story summary: Half "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" and half "Beauty and the Beast", with a dash of the story of Hades and Persephone thrown in for good measure.

Thoughts: I am four reviews behind, so point form it is:

--Nice complexity for some of the characters, especially the Princess whose name I've forgotten and the really handsome boy whose name I've also forgotten. (Yeah...I have a bad memory, and I don't have book on hand right now.) The "Beast" or Hades character was not as blameless as he tends to be, either, though still on the side of Good.

--I seem to have read quite a few books with feisty 12-year-old fantasy heroines recently, the best being Kat, Incorrigible, Ordinary Magic, and this one. Reveka is a great addition, with her interest in herblore so passionate that she was willing to give up marriage and a family to become a nun and study it for the rest of her life.

--Speaking of which, it was immensely refreshing to have a recently-written character who actually wanted to be a nun (though nuns weren't exactly portrayed well...). Many people seem to completely misunderstand the place the religious had in the middle ages--being a religious was actually rather freeing for women. Like the awesome Hildegard of Bingen, who was mentioned several times in this book, and was recently canonized (yay!).

--It was good and worth reading, and the take on Beauty and the Beast was rather unusual. And I have nothing else to say because, as I mentioned, I'm four reviews behind.

P.S. My favourite cover illustrator Jason Chan again! Sooo pretty.