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Evelyn's Reviews > The Last Princess
The Last Princess (Last Princess, #1)
by Galaxy Craze
by Galaxy Craze
The Last Princess Review (negative)
It is England in the year 2090. People are suffering from famine as a result of the Seventeen Days - a series of natural disasters that destroyed crops and reduced cities to rubble. In London, political unrest has weakened the government and the English royal family. Princess Eliza Windsor, still reeling from the death of her mother at the hands of a revolutionary named Cornelius Holister, is living in the relative safety of Balmoral Castle, in the Scottish countryside. At a ball for her older sister, the Crown Princess Mary, this illusion is shattered when revolutionaries invade and kidnap Eliza’s sister and brother. Eliza escapes, but in order to rescue her family, is forced to infiltrate the very heart of the revolutionary army that has sworn to take down the royal family.
This dystopian novel has all the atmosphere of the genre - the grey starkness of catastrophe-stricken London, the faintly feudal Scottish village and the casual brutality and psychological mind-games of the rebel army stronghold. However, the weak characterization of its reluctant heroine, who seems to be reacting to events rather than taking direct physical action, does not quite realize the promise of a strong, fighting princess bent on revenge. The hint of romance, between Eliza and a sergeant in the rebel army, helps to lighten the dark, post-apocalyptic mood, but the boy-saves-rather-helpless-girl motif doesn’t do much to present Eliza in a Katniss-esque light. The English setting of “The Last Princess” does add a glimmering of novelty (at least to American audiences), with its nods to the complicated history of the British monarchy and the British boarding school flavor of rebel army life. Some of the more fascinating, environmental elements to the story, such as the Seventeen Days and the agro-scientific impulses of Holister, are not dwelt upon, which would have helped to make this a richer, more engrossing dystopian universe. There is a sequel in the works, so perhaps the flaws of this first book of the series will be addressed in the next.
* Note: received an ARC from the publisher.
It is England in the year 2090. People are suffering from famine as a result of the Seventeen Days - a series of natural disasters that destroyed crops and reduced cities to rubble. In London, political unrest has weakened the government and the English royal family. Princess Eliza Windsor, still reeling from the death of her mother at the hands of a revolutionary named Cornelius Holister, is living in the relative safety of Balmoral Castle, in the Scottish countryside. At a ball for her older sister, the Crown Princess Mary, this illusion is shattered when revolutionaries invade and kidnap Eliza’s sister and brother. Eliza escapes, but in order to rescue her family, is forced to infiltrate the very heart of the revolutionary army that has sworn to take down the royal family.
This dystopian novel has all the atmosphere of the genre - the grey starkness of catastrophe-stricken London, the faintly feudal Scottish village and the casual brutality and psychological mind-games of the rebel army stronghold. However, the weak characterization of its reluctant heroine, who seems to be reacting to events rather than taking direct physical action, does not quite realize the promise of a strong, fighting princess bent on revenge. The hint of romance, between Eliza and a sergeant in the rebel army, helps to lighten the dark, post-apocalyptic mood, but the boy-saves-rather-helpless-girl motif doesn’t do much to present Eliza in a Katniss-esque light. The English setting of “The Last Princess” does add a glimmering of novelty (at least to American audiences), with its nods to the complicated history of the British monarchy and the British boarding school flavor of rebel army life. Some of the more fascinating, environmental elements to the story, such as the Seventeen Days and the agro-scientific impulses of Holister, are not dwelt upon, which would have helped to make this a richer, more engrossing dystopian universe. There is a sequel in the works, so perhaps the flaws of this first book of the series will be addressed in the next.
* Note: received an ARC from the publisher.
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