Lisa Dawn's Blog: The Princess Blog, page 31

Review: Beyond the Tiara

In the early 2000s, I purchased a thin hardcover book entitled Disney Princess: The Essential Guide because I felt it was important to have the reference materials to back it up my princess fan status. At that time, there were only six official Disney Princesses, and the brand was still fairly new. Since then, the Disney Princess brand has exploded into a corporate empire that has kept my blog alive and thriving for over five years. So it seemed like a good time for an upgrade. Beyond the Tiara by Emily Zemler is a nearly 200-page long coffee table textbook that puts The Essential Guide to shame. It contains quotes, concept art, memorabilia, and other Disney Princess facts that make it the most comprehensive guide on the market for the Disney Princess brand today. Plus, it has a sparkly holographic cover.

This book contained everything I was hoping for and more. It covers each and every aspect of the Disney Princess brand from conception to reception. Just about everything that I've ever posted about in my blog that relates to Disney was mentioned at some point. I kept thinking "I could have written this!" Emily Zemler sounds like a genuine fan of all things princess who understands the positive impact that princess culture has on society and celebrates the old and the new with photos, quotes, and obscure historical facts. The first chapter of the book was my favorite. It was the longest by far and gave a brief summary of how each princess movie was developed alongside quotes and stories from the production teams. Each princess got a full-page spread that depicted the women who inspired their character designs from popular celebrities to the original voice artists and live-action models.

The rest of the book covers everything in the Disney Princess fandom that has ever paid tribute to the characters from Kingdom Hearts to Sofia the First to popular cosplayers. It referenced other things I've posted about in my blog that I thought were long forgotten as well such as the #DreamBigPrincess campaign and the discontinued Disney Princess Majestic Quest app. It also paid homage to the women who worked behind the scenes such as Mary Blair. Nearly every page has lush full-color artwork and photos of various merchandise and conceptual designs that had rarely been seen before these films were released on DVD in the mid-2000s. I learned something new about Belle from a Paige O'Hara quote in which she expressed how she thought the original design for the character was too refined and perfect for audiences to relate to, so the animators reworked the character to give her more of a "girl next door" look so that fans would be able to see themselves in her. That stray wisp of hair on her forehead that the animators like to talk about in interviews was likely related to this.

In addition to being a reference guide for the Disney Princess movies, Beyond the Tiara also serves as a history book. Snow White, the first Disney Princess, came out in 1937, which was over 80 years ago, making it a historical brand. The look and personality of each princess is a reflection of what the ideal woman is like during that time period. The book references famous women throughout history who provided inspiration for the Disney Princesses such as and Princess Diana. The merchandise section shows the evolution of the dolls over time and reveals all kinds of experimental themed products such as Snow White-themed house cleaning fluids! The music section serves as a reminder that recorded soundtracks predate home video, so in the era of Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, the only way that fans were able to re-experience their favorite moments in the films was by listening to the soundtracks. It shows us how far we've come and not to take modern streaming services where we can watch out favorite princess movie at the press of a button for granted.

Beyond the Tiara is the ultimate guidebook for every Disney Princess fan to keep on hand and learn about how the brand has evolved over the years. Though the book attempted to reference future properties like the upcoming Tiana series, it failed to reference Raya as an official Disney Princess even though the movie was mentioned in a blurb about Disney films exploring other cultures. Another minor error I found was Aurora's page listing her film as 1955 instead of 1959, but this could have been an editing mistake rather than part of the manuscript since the author seemed to know her stuff pretty well. If you're on the fence about buying this book, I say go for it! Not only is it a nice display piece, it's also just as much fun to flip through the pictures as it is to read the actual text. Plus, it's a great way for millennial parents who grew up with the Disney Princesses to bond with their daughters and stealthily teach them about women's history.

Review: Disenchanted

Fifteen years after the premiere of the one-of-a-kind Disney Princess tribute film, Enchanted, Disney has released the next chapter with its latest direct-to-streaming sequel, Disenchanted. While direct-to-streaming is the modern-day equivalent of the direct-to-video sequels of the past, this one could have easily been a theatrical release due to the grand scale of its cinematography that made its thematic direct-to-streaming predecessor Godmothered feel like a cheap imitation. While it may not have been perfect, the plot of Disenchanted is a natural progression of Giselle's life from when the first movie left off with a relatable message for today's audiences, who have a decade and a half more life experience than they did when they saw the original.

Disenchanted has a bit of a rocky start with Giselle's sidekick, Pip, telling his children that more happened after the first movie as though he is trying to convince the audience that it was necessary to make a sequel. Things get more grounded when we return to the real world and see how her family has grown. Giselle and Robert are now married with a newborn baby, and Morgan is a teenager. Like many couples do after they settle down and lose the energy they had in their youth, they decide to move out of the city that never sleeps to the more peaceful suburban town of Monroeville. Since Morgan is now an angsty teenager, she is unhappy about being ripped from her old home and forced to start over in the middle of her high school career. Giselle tries to resolve the situation the only way she knows--by singing. This is one aspect of Giselle's personality that seems to have regressed since the first movie.

In Enchanted, Giselle sang a total of three perfectly curated songs, each one an homage to a different Disney Princess trope that had just the right mix of nostalgia and originality thanks to Alan Menken's genius composing. At the end of the movie, Prince Edward tried to do a duet with her, and she admitted that she no longer felt like singing because she was thinking now, a metaphor that she had acclimated to life in the real world. In this movie, she sang all the time, and often for no particular reason. I went on my phone halfway through the film to confirm that the songs were written by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (the creative mind behind Wicked) because they bore so little resemblance to their usual style. When Giselle used an Andalasian wishing wand to turn the real world into a fairy tale, everyone started singing all the time, and for no particular reason. Though it made more sense after that, I began to finally understand Robert's irritation at Disney at Giselle for randomly bursting into song in the first movie.

When this movie does something well, it does it very well. What Disenchanted gets right is its comprehensive analysis of what it means to grow up in a nostalgia-based culture. Giselle grew up in a world of fairy tales. Even though New York City is new and exciting to her at first, she eventually comes to find the real world exhausting, something that many of us experience as we get older. Moving to a suburban paradise seems like the perfect solution, but soon she has the opposite problem. Her life there is so quiet and boring that she clings to the fantasy and magic of her childhood as a form of escapism. Sound familiar? It's this very mindset that has motivated Disney to release so many remakes of their beloved classics over the years. Since we cannot actually erase all of our experiences and return to the carefree days of our childhood, Giselle's spell unleashes a curse that begins to suck all the magic out of Andalasia and erase her memories of innocence, transforming her into a wicked stepmother. Morgan, the new princess of the story, is the only one who can save the day.

I really enjoyed how Disenchanted handled Morgan's character. Instead of aging her up fifteen years, which would make her an adult in her early 20s, they turned her into a headstrong teenager, the same age as a Disney Princess. Where Enchanted was vaguely inspired by "Snow White" with Giselle's jealous stepmother trying to kill her using the infamous poisoned apple, this movie papys homage to "Cinderella." Morgan meets a boy she likes and wants to dance with him at a festival that Giselle tries to stop her from attending because of the curse. Giselle even destroys Morgan's pale blue ballgown and locks her in her room before revealing that she only has until midnight to break the curse. Since Morgan wanted her father to marry Giselle specifically because she had been so obsessed with fairy tales and princesses as a child, it is fitting for her to become the new princess heroine. The method that Nancy and Edward provided for her to save Giselle was also fitting, which was using the magic of memories to remind her who she is. This is a fantastic metaphor for how our life experiences can turn us into bitter people when we get older, and nostalgia alone isn't enough to bring out our true selves. We need to remember why the things we loved made us so happy and the bonds we shared with our families who provided those things for us. This movie did a great job of establishing that by showing how Morgan had been welcomed into Giselle's life as her new daughter.

Overall, Disenchanted is a worthy sequel to Enchanted that shows us the evolution of the life of a fairy tale princess entering the real world. In the first movie, Giselle found joy in the excitement of experiencing new things like a young adult living away from home for the first time. In the second movie, she learns the importance of appreciating what she has gained as a result of her choices and not clinging to the past for happiness. Morgan learns the same lesson in a different way by accepting her life in a new town and realizing that we can't stay in the same place forever. This is a terrific family film for any age, but especially for older fans who grew up with the first movie or saw it as a young adult. What are your thoughts on Disenchanted? Let me know in the comments!

Review: A Kiss and a Dare

I received a review copy of A Kiss and Dare by Charlene Raddon and completed it just in time to write my review on National Princess Day (Happy National Princess Day, by the way). This book is a fairytale izekai, or "portal fantasy," story, a genre that has exploded in popularity, in which a character from one world is transported to another one that they are unfamiliar with. Typically, the character is either from the real world or travels to it. In this case, it is the latter. The timing of this review is particularly appropriate because  Disenchanted  comes on on Disney+ today, which is the sequel to another fairytale izekai film. A Kiss and a Dare is actually more of a time travel story than a full portal fantasy, but the lines between fantasy and reality get blurry when you throw magic into the mix.

Gwenlyn is a young Welsh woman from the medieval era who was cursed by a witch to become a frog, and she can only break the spell by kissing her true love. It isn't until centuries later that she finds a young man named Garen who is the descendant/reincarnation of her past lover and uses him to regain her body in the contemporary era. In a nutshell, A Kiss and a Dare is a more "adult" version of A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn. Both books have an unassuming male protagonist who revives a woman that knows nothing about the modern era due to being frozen in time by a curse. The ages of the the characters and the target audience in A Kiss and a Dare are quite a bit older than that of A Kiss in Time. While the characters never actually engage in any sexual acts, the extreme level of teasing and foreplay on Gwenlyn's part borderlines as smut.
There are so many different stories and films that this book reminded me of that it could easily span the full length of my review to list them all. Gwenlyn's frog transformation is, of course, a reference to "The Frog Prince," an interesting choice to pass the centuries since it means that unlike Sleeping Beauty, she would have been conscious all those years. Yet, upon turning human again centuries later, she acts no different than a wide-eyed child entering the world for the first time like Giselle from Enchanted. I would be remiss not to mention the striking similarity this plot has to an obscure made-for-TV movie from 2001 called Prince Charming, in which a prince from ancient times was turned into a frog for several centuries until a woman from the modern era kissed him. When he regained his former self, he also acted no different than he did prior to the transformation as though all those years as a frog had no effect on his mental state whatsoever. Perhaps that is simply part of the magic. Another film with a similar plot of a cursed maiden falling for the descendant of her true love is Mannequin: On the Move, a fairytale-inspired sequel to a classic '80s film.
So how does this particular version of the tale as old as time hold up? It's a fun little romp for adult fans of old romcoms who want children to stay out of their fairy tales but not much more than that. It has the obligatory princess, witch, romantic rival, and undeserving hero who must choose between a business alliance and his own happiness. Though it is written by a female author, I think this book may hold more appeal for men than for women since Gwenlyn comes off as a male fantasy, constantly throwing herself at Garen and shedding her clothes at every opportunity she gets. His fiancée, Leeza, seemed like a better match for him to me, but romcoms tend to have one option who's "safe" and another who's "fun," and the latter is usually the one that gets picked. For a time travel story, there were no deep musings about whether the ways of the past were superior to the ways of the present or vice versa. Gwenlyn was way too thirsty for Garen to have any deep thoughts like that. She also didn't seem to understand some relatively basic concepts that I don't think the time travel element should have affected as much as it did.
All in all, I would say this book is more of a romcom with fairy tale elements than a fairy tale with romcom elements. Even though it was released this year, it maintains many of the outdated stereotypes that shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend try to correct, but it's mostly harmless if you can get past Gwenlyn's shamelessness. It has some elegant writing and is nostalgic of movies that were popular in the early 2000s. I would recommend this book to adult romance fans who are looking for something a little magical, and don't want to think too hard.

Disney Returns to the Realm of Enchancia!

Now that Sofia the First has come home to Disney+, Disney has shared a big announcement today to celebrate the show's 10th anniversary. Sofia the First is getting a new spinoff! Series creator  announced earlier today "I am excited to be continuing my creative partnership with both Alyssa and Disney Branded Television. Together, we have produced three meaningful, diverse shows, and I am looking forward to broadening the scope of our collaboration while also championing new voices. It’s particularly thrilling to return to the enchanted world of ‘Sofia the First,’ where it all began 10 years ago, and create a follow-up series that is just as magical." The announcement comes as a surprise at a time when Disney Junior seemed to have been straying away from its princess properties.

It is not entirely clear whether the spinoff will feature the same characters as the original series as teenagers/young adults or a new cast of younger students attending Royal Prep. What we do know for certain is that this is not the first new series set in this universe. Elena of Avalor was the first spinoff to take place in the Ever Realm and featured a slightly older Sofia, James, and Amber making a cameo in the series finale, which aired only two years ago. As such, it is surprising that Disney plans to make a return to this enchanted world so soon after our last visit. I'm hoping it doesn't go in the direction of other inferior reboots that didn't give their original properties a chance to rest such as DC Super Hero Girls or Monster High. Sofia the First is one of my favorite shows of all time next to Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, so I remain cautiously optimistic about this new offering.

The kingdom of Enchancia remains one of my absolute favorite fantasy universes of all time. It is a relatively safe world filled with enchanted jewelry, flying creatures of all sorts, magic portals, and beautiful fashions. The show also introduced a number of concepts throughout its four-year run, any of which could easily be developed into a spinoff. There were the Mystic Isles, a heavenly realm in the sky inhabited by faeries, unicorns, and god-like beings, the Enchanted Library, which allowed Sofia to enter stories from other magical worlds, and the fabled Amulet of Avalor, which transported characters from other Disney movies to visit Enchancia during times of crisis. Since the spinoff is also being produced by Disney Junior, it will likely be targeted at the same age group of preschoolers. Therefore, it could be a new magical academia show that takes place primarily at Royal Prep and introduces us to a new class. Among these options, learning more about the Mystic Isles holds the most appeal for me.

Sofia the First is not the only property being revived by Disney. The Hollywood Reporter announced this week that a new sequel is in the works for The Princess Diaries. Opinions will vary on this, but I greatly preferred the first movie to The Princess Diaries 2, and not just because it stuck closer to the Meg Cabot books. I felt like the second movie lost a lot of the charm that made the first one so memorable and even changed the main characters' personalities to some extent. It's hard to accept that a new film made so many years later would be able to correct that injustice, especially if Anne Hathaway isn't in it, a possibility that has yet to be confirmed. Combine that with the new Enchanted sequel coming out tomorrow, and it really does seem like there are no new ideas left in Hollywood.

Whether or not this new Sofia the First series captures the magic of the original remains to be seen, but Elena of Avalor has proven to me that it is impossible to capture lightning in a bottle twice. If the rumored Ariel series is also in the works at Disney Junior, we may be entering a second golden age of princess cartoons like the early 2010s, which will be a refreshing change since there are no princess shows airing in America at the present time. While the future of creative fairy tale shows is uncertain, we can continue being grateful for the past masterpieces for Thanksgiving this month. Not only is today the 10th anniversary of Sofia the First, but it is also the 33rd anniversary of Disney's original animated classic The Little Mermaid. Are you eager for more spinoffs, sequels, and reboots of Disney's fairy tale princess properties, or would you prefer to see something new? Let me know in the comments!

Review: The Golden Princess

Melanie Cellier's Four Kingdoms series was my first introduction to the world of indie fairy tale retellings. The Princess Companion got me started on a mission to read as many fairy tale adaptations written by independent authors as I could and even to try writing some of my own. Since then, Melanie's Four Kingdoms series has expanded from one series of fairy tales into three and includes over a dozen books that each cover a different princess and take place in the world of the Four Kingdoms. Normally, I find Melanie Cellier's books easy to follow, but there was something off about this new one that I couldn't quite pinpoint. The Golden Princess  is a retelling of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" that ties into the new kingdom discovered in The Desert Princess, the previous book in the Return to the Four Kingdoms series.

Whether it's books, television, or film, when a series goes on for too long, it reaches a point where it loses its charm. The Golden Princess is that point for me in the Return to the Four Kingdoms series. While too much exposition can be trite, this book didn't have enough. It starts out with the main character, Zaria, working as a servant and provides very little explanation as to why, expecting readers to recall the events of The Desert Princess, which came out over a year prior. Zaria was once the daughter of a vizier, but he turned evil or got murdered by someone evil who impersonated him, and she was sent away because of that even though I'm not sure why that would be her fault in any way. For some reason that wasn't fully explained, she wasn't able to contact her friends from her previous life and tell them what happened. There were so many things in this book that were only half explained that I couldn't relate to Zaria's struggles or understand what her goals were at all.

The Golden Princess has some interesting ideas, such as an enchanted treasure cave reminiscent of the Cave of Wonders, but it never takes the time to fully flesh them out. Instead of a suspenseful action sequence like the one where Aladdin must escape the lava filling the cave, Zaria talks about how she's suspicious of the treasure but allows her companions to take it anyway, and it takes a long time for anything to come of it as a result. Much of this is due to the story of "Ali Baba" being more convoluted than "Aladdin" with an overabundance of characters. I was not particularly familiar with that fairy tale before reading this book, and now I can see why it isn't that popular. There are no clear stakes, no clear villain, and no clear direction that the story is going.

Being a princess book, there is a prince and a love story, but even that feels shoehorned in since it was not part of the story of "Ali Baba." Melanie Cellier did something similar by adding a prince in her Spoken Mage series that didn't quite fit into the main plot. Like Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella, Zaria was childhood friends with Prince Tarek, and their unexpected reunion forces them to eventually admit their feelings for each other. All of Melanie Cellier's books contain romance, and this is one of the weakest, possibly due to being one of the only love stories that wasn't part of the original fairy tale that was adapted. Tarek's character further convoluted the story by adding another name to remember. The obligatory royal ball and fancy dress scenes seemed like they were included only to satisfy expectations about the princess genre.

Though hardcore fans of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" or 1,001 Arabian Knights might find this adaptation interesting, I don't know anyone who resides in that particular camp. As is, this book feels like a first draft with too many characters, plot threads, and missing pieces of exposition to be fully enjoyable. I cannot blame all of that on the author since I think a good deal of my issues may be attributed to the source material itself. If you are looking for a good fairy tale adaptation, I recommend skipping this one and turning to one of Melanie Cellier's other books. The Secret Princess is a particular favorite of mine.

Story Saturday: The Princess and the Poet

"The Princess and the Poet"Once upon a time, there was a quiet princess named Mary. It wasn't that Mary was shy. She actually had a lot to say, but she was cursed by a fairy as a baby to only be able to speak if the words rhyme. It was common in her kingdom for fairies to curse princesses in order to guarantee they would one day marry. The king and queen thought this was the most innocuous of the options the fairy provided for their daughter to find love, so they agreed to it. While Mary was a prolific writer, she was awful at poetry. She soon became known as the silent princess.

One day, Princess Mary went to the market to purchase a new quill. This was something she did often. She went through many quills trying to make rhymes that didn't work and crossing them out, smearing ink everywhere and breaking the sharp tip of the quill. The shopkeeper, who knew her well, had a rare gift for her during this visit.
"It was the strangest thing," he said. "I was gathering supplies to sell at my shop when I heard a voice coming from one of the boxes. Yet, when I opened it, there was nothing inside but some new quills. Still, the voice wouldn't stop tormenting me with incessant rhyming. That was when I realized one of the quills was talking! Said he was a poet, he did. Since everyone in the kingdom knows about your condition as the Silent Princess, I thought maybe a talking quill would be just what you needed, so I saved it for you, your highness."
With that, the merchant presented Mary with a grand feathered quill with bristles of violet and crimson. At the bottom of the quill was a small notch that seemed to form a mouth. The bristles vibrated as though there was a strong breeze, but Mary felt no breeze.
"What good fortune has befallen meFor such a lovely princess I do see," said the quill.
Princess Mary clapped her hands in delight. Not only could the quill talk, but it also rhymed! This was exactly what she needed. She paid the shopkeeper well and took the quill home with her, eager to learn how to rhyme better.
When Mary returned to the castle, she gave the quill a spot of honor on her writing desk and curtsied to it.
"Pleased to  meet you as wellI think we'll get along just swell," responded the quill.
Mary tried to respond, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't come up with a rhyme. In frustration, she sat at her desk and began writing.
My name is Mary, and I wish to know ask sayWhat fate has befallen you...
Mary was about to give up her attempt at a rhyme when the quill leaped out of her hand and finished her rhyme for her.
on this fine day.
Mary nodded in excitement and repeated the words out loud.
"My name is Mary, and I wish to say what fate has befallen you on this fine day!"
"So you do speak!" exclaimed the quill. "Such a lovely voice too. To answer your question, I am a poet who offended a witch with my incessant rhymes. Now I must be a quill until the end of times."
That's awful! wrote Mary. I wish I could help. But I'm also cursed I also have a curse...
The quill finished her sentence yet again.
...on myself.
Mary repeated the words out loud.
"So, you can only talk in rhyme, eh?" asked the quill. "That's not so bad. I'll teach you how, so don't be sad."
Over the next few weeks, Mary's reputation as the Silent Princess had all but vanished as she practiced rhyming with her new friend day in and day out. Her parents were shocked by how good she had become at poetry almost overnight, but when they asked her what the secret was, she would only respond with silence. While the poet taught her to rhyme, she got to know him better. She learned that he came from an impoverished household and dreamed of becoming a great bard, but those dreams were destroyed the day the witch cursed him. He had been heartbroken ever since. She grew to care deeply for the poet. On her eighteenth birthday, she recited a rhyme to him that she had been working on a secret.
"Today I will dance in a gown of blueWith princes from far and wideBut the only one I want is youForever by my side."
With that, there was a flash of light, and the quill turned into a handsome bard, who bowed graciously to the princess.
"Did I break your curse?" she asked. Her hands flew to her mouth. For the first time in her life, she realized that she had uttered a sentence without rhyming.
"It looks like my curse is not the only one that has been broken tonight," said the poet.

The princess got her wish of dancing at her birthday ball with her beloved poet. Now that he was restored to his original form, he was able to finally live out his dreams as the royal bard and the princess's true love. His broken heart was mended.

Review: Sands of Deceit

Few authors are able to pump out lengthy fantasy novels with fantastic character and world-building as quickly as Celeste Baxendell. The latest book in her Bewitching Fairy Tales series is Sands of Deceit, an adaptation of "King Thrushbeard" and "Bluebeard," two lesser-known fairy tales that rarely get adaptations. I was pleased that this story was a direct tie-in to my favorite of her books, Cinders of Glass. Instead of a sweet, naive, and reckless protagonist like Liora, this book is about the "mean girl" who bullied her, Lady Gisele, who is equally relatable in entirely different ways. Gisele is cold, calculating, and worldly with an unexpected vulnerability at her core. I thoroughly enjoyed reading her redemption arc, especially since it reminded me of one of my own books, The Stolen Slipper.

Lady Gisele has just about given up on her chances of succeeding in life. She comes from a ruined family, and to top it all off, the prince she was seeking married her rival, Liora. When Liora offers her a second chance if she agrees to do an undercover spy mission for her kingdom, Gisele has nothing left to lose. The mission requires her to pretend to be married to Hakim, a man she finds insufferable while working for his cousin, Karim, as a singer and doing demeaning labor when she isn't performing. What she doesn't know is that during the entire course of their mission, Hakim is using magic to disguise himself as Karim, who has a secret mission of her own. Unfortunately for them, Gisele is very good at discovering people's secrets, a skill that nearly gets her killed on multiple occasions.

This book does a great job of combining the stories of "King Thrushbeard" and "Bluebeard" with a unique twist that this series is prone to. Both fairy tales are about a bearded man keeping potentially deadly secrets from a woman. In this case, the bearded man is Hakim in disguise as Karim. While the real Karim is living happily ever after with his true love, he entrusts Hakim to run an undercover operation where he pretends to marry troubled women while pretending to be him, claims that each wife has tragically passed away, and then sneaks the "dead" wives off to a life of freedom, kind of like a medieval witness protection program. The problem with this scheme is that it looks like Karim is killing all of his wives to the general public. Gisele quickly becomes concerned about the fate of his wives until she learns that he is involved in the same mission as her. After that, she begins to fall for Karim because she thinks she isn't good enough for Hakim.

Gisele and Hakim have a unique relationship that is not portrayed often in fairy tale books. They are constantly at each other's throats, but each secretly desires the other's approval. This is a pretty classic romcom trope for couples who must pretend to be married despite not being able to stand each other and then falling in love later on. The writing in the book adds new depth to that trope by focusing on both characters' perspectives and how different their inner feelings are from the way they present themselves to the world. This gives them an opportunity to get to know each other better through their fake marriage by having private moments to reveal their vulnerabilities that they would not have had otherwise. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing how all the pieces of their relationship came together after each secret had been revealed.

Overall, I thought this was a much stronger book than the previous one in this series, and I loved all the throwbacks to Cinders of Glass. Gisele and Hakim are fascinating characters with complex goals and motivations. It's nice to take a break from the sugar-sweet gentle princess archetype once in a while and read about one who prefers to take charge of her own destiny. These characters are easy to relate to despite their complexities. The author did a fantastic job of combining two less popular fairy tales in an appealing way. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves classic fairy tales and wants to experience something that strays a bit from the beaten path.

Review: Time Princess - Sisters of the Sea

Everything's coming up mermaids! I just finished the final book in the amazing Vazula Chronicles the same week that Time Princess finally released the mermaid visual novel I had been waiting for. "Sisters of the Sea" draws heavy inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," but it is not the same story. Since the majority of it takes place on land, the game failed to provide any mermaid clothing or even mermaid-inspired outfits, opting instead for a more historically authentic Danish look from the period that the story takes place. The mermaids were a big draw for me, but I wouldn't consider this the most well-written story in the game, nor was it one of the worst.

"Sisters of the Sea" puts the player character in the role of Ondine, the little mermaid's sister, who turns human with some help from the Sea Wizard and travels to land in the hopes of restoring the soul of her sister, Marin. In this version, the mermaids do not give up their voice or their hair to become human but instead make a deal to help the Sea Wizard sabotage a ceremony that was meant to maintain peace between the kingdoms of the land and sea and became corrupt over the years. In this version, humans are very much aware of the existence of merfolk, and most harbor a pretty poor opinion of them. Because of this, Ondine must keep her identity a secret even though she can go back to her mermaid form at any time by touching the water, a theme that exists in many modern mermaid stories. On her quest to rescue her sister, she makes many allies and slowly uncovers the truth behind the ancient pact and Sea Wizard's motivation to destroy it.

This story has three companions. I preferred the female friend to the two potential love interests. Linore is a beautiful priestess who is locked away in a temple hidden in the depths of the castle for the sake of devoting her life to honoring the ancient pact. Though she is not supposed to speak to others, she makes an exception for Ondine and is as kind to her as she is wise. She is the sister of Prince Lucas, who wishes to nullify the pact to free Linore from her duty so she can live a normal life. When Ondine meets Prince Lucas for the first time, she struggles with her prejudice toward him, believing that he betrayed her sister and caused her soul to become trapped in a magic shell. When she sees how kind he is to her, she realizes that nothing is quite what it seems. Elias, a castle guard, has some secrets of his own and offers to team up with Ondine to help her accomplish their aligning goals.

The clothing options were the biggest disappointment of this story. While I understand that the clothes in Time Princess are applied to a base human model whose form can't be altered, I was expecting more mermaid-inspired fashions as opposed to historically accurate Danish ones. After all, a story about mermaids is the last thing you would expect to be historically accurate. The truth is I prefer the look of the paid special outfit from a few months ago or the "Lucky Jerry" mermaid dress from Gotham Memoirs to any of the dresses offered in this book. Though they were nice enough on their own, there's no comparison to some of the stunning ensembles the game has released in the past. After seeing how White Snake incorporated the snake motif into all of the protagonist's human clothing, I was expecting something similar from this. The closest this visual novel got to a mermaid-inspired look was the stylized sea armor dress that came with gorgeous seafoam-colored hair. This book had the same pitfall as the previous story, which requires you to win the final clothing piece to complete several of the outfits in the game's lottery system.

The most I can say about "Sisters of the Sea" is that it gave me a chance to stop complaining about the lack of mermaids in Time Princess. As far as epic adventures at sea go, I think I prefer "The Perfect Storm," which had better music, stronger writing, more creative costumes, and more fun characters. I was pleased that "Sisters of the Sea" gave Ondine an energetic crab sidekick reminiscent of Sebastian, but it didn't have much going for it other than that. The changes it made to "The Little Mermaid" seemed more confusing than deep, though the idea of telling the story from a sister's perspective is an intriguing concept. The little mermaid's sisters played a big role in original the fairy tale by trading their long hair for a knife to give her, yet no other adaptation truly explores what any of them were like outside of their connection to her. Like many other recent stories in Time Princess, this one felt rushed. I would have loved to see more time spent on developing the relationship between humans and the merfolk. I also wouldn't be opposed to a spin-off story that allows us to play as Marin.

Story Saturday: The Haunted Castle

"The Haunted Castle"Once upon a time, there were two princes. The older prince, Dorian, was kind and wise but had a gentle demeanor that shined through to all who knew him. Meanwhile, his younger brother, Stewart, was hotheaded and envied the crown. When their parents passed away and the crown was to be passed on to Prince Dorian, he and Stewart went out riding together in the countryside. Prince Stewart returned from their trip alone. To the horror of the entire palace staff, he reported a terrible accident in which Dorian's horse was spooked by a wild animal and ran off a cliff, taking the elder prince with him in a fatal drop. The kingdom mourned the loss of their future king, and preparations were made for Stewart to become king in his stead.
While most accepted this sad tale as fact, a scullery maid named Lorraine found the young prince's story very suspicious, especially when Dorian's body had yet to be recovered. She decided to try to investigate the castle to find out if Dorian was really dead. As she did her daily chores, she searched every nook and cranny for signs of the kind-hearted prince. Though her search revealed very little, she noticed some odd occurrences taking place throughout the castle. Everywhere she went, the lights would flicker, and objects on the shelves would rattle. At one point, a vase shook so hard that it fell to the floor and shattered. Prince Stewart accused Lorraine of doing this intentionally as a slight against the crown. In his anger, he slapped her across the face as punishment and warned her never to shirk her duties again.
As she tried to ignore the pain, Lorraine heard an odd humming sound coming from a tiny jewel on one of the prince's rings. It may have been the way the sunlight hit it or the impact of the blow, but she could have sworn the jewel was winking at her in an odd manner.
All too soon, the day arrived for Prince Stewart's coronation. The servants were instructed to make the ballroom look as pristine as possible with the royal crown polished and placed on display as the main attraction. Lorraine scrubbed every inch of the ballroom. When she went to polish the crown, she noticed a tiny chip missing in one of the jewels. The chip was exactly the same shape and color as the one she had spotted on the prince's ring. She feared what might happen if she spoke up too soon, so she waited with bated breath for the ceremony to begin.
Sure enough, Stewart entered in his luxurious fur-lined royal cape with jeweled rings glittering on each of his fingers, including the one with the jewel that had made the odd sound. As he was about to sit on the throne, Lorraine pretended to straighten his cape and instead threw it over his head, temporarily blinding him. In the split second she had before he recovered, she pulled the tiny gem off his finger.
Prince Stewart was infuriated. He began ranting and raving about how he always knew Lorraine was incompetent as a made, and now she had ruined his coronation ceremony. In his anger, he placed an order for her to be executed immediately. Just before the guards could bind her, she inserted the tiny gem into the gap she had found on the royal crown. It fit as perfectly as a puzzle piece.
In a blinding flash of light, the crown levitated in the air and took the form of a man. Soon, Prince Dorian stood before his subjects alive and whole. The crowd murmured and gasped.
"My loyal subjects," he announced to the procession, "my brother has deceived you. In an attempt to ensure that he did not receive the crown, they had a wizard bind it to me by magic. Prince Stewart found a loophole in this spell. By separating a piece of the crown, he caused my soul to be separated from my body. Among all of you, only one person was wise enough to see through his treachery. As a reward for her efforts, she will be your new queen and rule alongside me."
He reached out a hand to Lorraine, who the guards released in confusion. Lorraine stepped forward hesitantly in disbelief that she deserved such a great honor.
"Do not fear," whispered Prince Dorian, as he led her to the throne. "You have proven yourself more than worthy."

Lorraine looked into the eyes of the prince she had always admired and saw that he was sincere. She took his and regarded her people with pride, which is how a simple maid came to be queen of this land.

Review: The School for Good and Evil (Netflix)

Back in June when I found out that Netflix was making a movie adaptation of The School for Good and Evil, I went ahead and read the first book in the series. I liked the idea of a school for fairy tale characters, but it left me with a lot of questions regarding how changing their childhoods would alter their stories and why the author had such a superficial perception of good, evil, and girls in general. The Netflix adaptation resolved many of these issues by cutting irrelevant scenes and dialogue and making just enough minor changes to the plot to make it more coherent. Was it a perfect movie? It was never going to be, considering the source material. The filmmakers did a great job of salvaging whatever substance they could find from the book and turning it into a fun teenage romp with gorgeous costumes.

The School for Good and Evil is about two girls named Sophie and Agatha who live in a backwoods town called Gavaldon. Though the other people in the town are cruel to Agatha and mockingly call her a witch, she is happy as long as she has Sophie by her side. Sophie, on the other hand, wants more out of life. She dreams of becoming a princess and living a life of fairy tales and adventure. Where the book focuses mainly on Sophie and Agatha's differences and how unlikely they are to become friends, the movie does a fantastic job of portraying their deep bond with some stellar acting and dialogue that reminds us what it was like when our best friend was the most important person in our lives and nothing else mattered. Sophie and Agatha are there for each other through thick and thin, telling off bullies, sharing inside jokes, and bonding over their favorite things. I thought their friendship was much stronger in the Netflix film than it ever felt in the book.

Once we get to know our heroines, they are whisked away to the School for Good and Evil, where Sophie is forced to mingle with a bunch of goths and furries, while Agatha gets trapped in a nightmare of her own with a bunch of stuck-up princesses who are just as cruel to her as the children from her village. This is where the movie tries to redeem the inconsistencies of the book. In the book, Agatha was a confusing person who was obsessed with death, played cruel pranks, and tried to sabotage Sophie to get her to leave the school. Meanwhile, Sophie was obsessed with princesses and goodness but constantly went off the rails with little explanation until she ultimately killed someone with no repercussions. The movie made both of these characters more consistent and relatable. No longer carrying around dead animals, Agatha is a reluctant hero with all the potential in the world except self-confidence. Sophie's actions are also more consistent thanks to the film introducing the character of Rafal much earlier than the book. Instead of having Sophie act out for no reason, all of her wicked acts were prompted by Rafal's manipulation to revolutionize the school.

While I enjoyed the changes that were made and understood the reasoning behind them, I think that hardcore fans of the book series might be disappointed because so much was cut. The majority of the scenes that were cut for the Netflix adaptation involved magical transformations that enhanced the setting of a magic school but added little to the story. I could see that the majority of the film's budget went into the costumes, leaving little room for visual effects. The one aspect of the book that the film was lacking, as a result, was Agatha's proficiency in class. In the book, she quickly became an expert at magic and excelled in all her own classes at the School for Good while helping Sophie with her classwork in the School for Evil by disguising herself as a cockroach and whispering all the answers in her ear. Here, the only thing Agatha got graded on was smiling, which she immediately failed. One benefit of the lack of magical transformations is that the film excluded all of the gratuitous underage nudity that the author featured to a disturbing degree in the book.

The School for Good and Evil is a fun and harmless fantasy flick for young audiences. It removed all of the disturbing imagery and questionable moral decisions on behalf of the main characters that made me uncomfortable when I read the book. The Netflix adaptation is a simple and somewhat forgettable story that reminded me of many similar teen movies like Disney's Descendants. I loved the costumes, especially all of the gorgeous princess gowns featured throughout, though I was surprised that the movie acquired the rights to Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty Waltz" for a key makeovers scene after Disney refused to give the rights to the melody to a Barbie movie that never got made. If you're looking for a quick fantasy fix, this movie is a perfectly fine option, which, unlike the book, is safe to share with your kids.