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Princess of Roumania #3
The White Tyger
This is a truly magical tale, full of strangeness, terrors and wonders. Many girls daydream that they are really a princess adopted by commoners. In the case of teenager Miranda Popescu, this is literally true. Because she is at the fulcrum of a deadly political battle between conjurers in an alternate world where "Roumania" is a leading European power, Miranda was hidden by her aunt in our world, where she was adopted and raised in a quiet Massachusetts college town. The narrative is split between our world and the people in Roumania working to protect or to capture her Aunt Aegypta Schenck versus the mad Baroness Ceaucescu in Bucharest, and the sinister alchemist, the Elector of Ratisbon, who holds her true mother prisoner in Germany. This is the story of how Miranda -- with her two best friends, Peter and Andromeda -- is brought back to her home reality. Each of them is changed in the process and all will have much to learn about their true identities and the strange world they find themselves in.
This story is a triumph of contemporary fantasy.
This story is a triumph of contemporary fantasy.
325 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
2 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
About the author
Paul Park
61 books47 followersPaul Park (born 1954) is an American science fiction author and fantasy author. He lives in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children. He also teaches a Reading and Writing Science Fiction course at Williams College. He has also taught several times at the Clarion West Writing Workshop.
Park appeared on the American science fiction scene in 1987 and quickly established himself as a writer of polished, if often grim, literary science fiction. His first work was the Starbridge Chronicles trilogy, set on a world with generations-long seasons much like Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy. His critically acclaimed novels have since dealt with colonialism on alien worlds (Coelestis), Biblical (Three Marys) and theosophical (The Gospel of Corax) legends, a parallel world where magic works (A Princess of Roumania and its sequels, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger and The Hidden World), and other topics. He has published short stories in Omni Magazine, Interzone and other magazines.
Park appeared on the American science fiction scene in 1987 and quickly established himself as a writer of polished, if often grim, literary science fiction. His first work was the Starbridge Chronicles trilogy, set on a world with generations-long seasons much like Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy. His critically acclaimed novels have since dealt with colonialism on alien worlds (Coelestis), Biblical (Three Marys) and theosophical (The Gospel of Corax) legends, a parallel world where magic works (A Princess of Roumania and its sequels, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger and The Hidden World), and other topics. He has published short stories in Omni Magazine, Interzone and other magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 19, 2019
Now for really cleaning up old business. Back in the autumn I had read the first two books of this series before realizing that it was a four book series that I had never gotten around to purchasing the second half of. Which would normally be a stumbling block except that I found the series itself a kind of a literary stumbling block, one that I wasn't easily able to get past for a variety of reasons, most of which could be distilled to "I didn't find the series very interesting." Still, I vowed to soldier on and acquire the last two volumes, although my job deciding around that time that cutting my hours about twenty percent was a great idea put a damper on buying books that I wasn't seriously chomping at the bit to read. Hey, a guy's got to prioritize in these times.
But its not like I can wait until the books go public domain decades from now so while I should perhaps apologize to the author for not being willing to pay anywhere near full price for these, sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Besides, I was curious to see how it ends. And no, I didn't pirate them.
Interestingly, something that struck me after diving back into the series five months after I started reading it was how relatively easy it was to get back up to speed. The basics of the story hadn't changed in the interim . . . Miranda, a high school student from Massachusetts, learns that she's actually from the alternate world of Roumania, and our world was just a convenient hidey hole while forces opposed to her deceased father sought to find her for their own purposes. Along for the ride are her two friends Andromeda and Peter Gross, who were supposedly also teenagers but as it turns out were aides to her father that vowed to keep her safe and upon returning to Roumania have been turning back into who they used to be, although the blend of old and new has led to some interesting results.
Her main opponent throughout all this has been the Baroness Ceausescu, who has been playing her own high level political game with current occupiers Germany while doing all kinds of weird magical things and apparently inspiring a truly maniacal level of devotion despite her generally using and/or murdering almost everyone she comes into contact with. But she's a famous stage actress so I guess that forgives a lot of things.
And while that's the basics, on some level its quite possible to skip the first two books and feel like you haven't missed much of anything that couldn't have been taken care of with an info dump into the early chapters. Beyond the premise most of what occurs in those books is a lot of running around and talking and sometimes mystical things but not a lot of forward momentum, which almost makes it seem like the series was conceived as one giant book that got split into four parts for one reason or another.
Thus, lo and behold after hitting the halfway mark it turns out that things start happening. Miranda finally gets in the same room as the Baroness (and reunited with her mother in the process), while poor Peter faces a trial as a formality to the firing squad he's going to face while Andromeda becomes the wacky rom-com best friend this series needed and proceeds to swagger through the book with zero cares in the world beyond making everyone uncomfortable.
Andromeda (or Sasha Prochenko, as she/he is supposed to be) winds up being a revelation and really comes into focus here, a soldier with a great sense of style and very little you-know-whats to give. Earlier in the series it was unclear what was happening with her but with Prochenko finally some sense of direction we're left with a fascinating character that thinks of herself as a man but was once a pretty convincing woman (and may be a werewolf too?) and appears to be afraid of nothing. Park handles the character's assertions of his gender, giving us someone who appears to both sure of himself and fluid (in a weird Calvin and Hobbesesque vibe, most everyone sees Prochenko as a man while Miranda still sees her as Andromeda) while mostly singlehandedly insisting on dragging the plot to some form of conclusion. Whether he's having affairs for political and personal reasons, messing with the Baroness in ways that no other character will dare or simply unnerving everyone with a complete lack of concern for proper manners Prochenko/Andromeda livens up every scene he's in.
He's also the only reason the book feels like its going anywhere, mostly because he forces it. The Baroness' reasons for doing what she does aren't any clearer than in the first book but she seems to have more purpose than in the early stages, even if her impulses tend to undermine her own planning again and again (at least two murders she probably didn't need to do threaten to bring about her downfall in different ways) but as a focal point she remains the corrupted pulse at the heart of the book and as the instigator of all the problems that everyone has to deal with she remains a fascinatingly flawed characters. When her and Prochenko share scenes together the book crackles, as a woman who always gets what she wants meets someone who doesn't care what she wants.
All this is great, I just wish there were more of it because throughout all of this Miranda remains singularly uninteresting, no matter how much the book wants to convince us that all of this is worth going through for her. As with the first two books she's mostly a nonentity her, sparring with the Baroness in minor ways and attempting to save Peter but rarely doing anything to help her own cause beyond trying to get as far away as possible from all this. She doesn't want to rule Roumania or be the White Tyger or even hang out with her real mother all that much . . . while not everyone needs to be sassy and take-charge you'd hope that the main character would at least seize the reins at some point instead of reacting constantly, which is what happens here. It makes her scenes possessed of a strange stasis, marking time until she has no choice but to act when events force her hand.
Yet for all that I have to say this is the first book in the series that really engaged me. The politics, while still unclear, sharpen ever so slightly so you can start to see the outline of the stakes at play. Bringing all the players closer together helps clarify who is supposed to be responsible for what and with the subplot of "Let's all find Miranda" out of the way, the rampant political maneuvering can begin. While Miranda and Peter Gross aren't going to light the world on fire as characters, there's enough charge in Prochenko and the Baroness to make up for it and that tends to spill over into whoever is in their orbit. It also helps that the miasma that seems to seep over the first two books and make it feel like you were reading through a numbing fog has abated, with his subtleties shifting enough so that you don't feel as much like you're inside someone's dream of what the story should be. In fact, I have to give credit to his prose here, which is almost marvelously understated, often depending on you reading or rereading carefully to get certain details. It can work against him (the ending of this book didn't make sense until I started the next one) but overall it suits the atmosphere better than it had in the past, getting closer to the otherworldly vibe underlying all the political stuff that I think the book is shooting for.
But even with the improvements I still have mixed feelings about this series. This is by far the most enjoyable book in the series so far but that still means you have to go through two so-so books to get here . . . and its not like goes from "so-so" to "mindblowing", more like "hey, pretty good". Getting actual action helps matters immensely, but can't make up for an overall sense that the series is just too low-key for its own good. The months long layoff let me come back to this with fresh eyes and I do have a better appreciation for its strengths but I think if I went back and reread the first two books now I don't think I'd find my opinions changed all that much.
But its not like I can wait until the books go public domain decades from now so while I should perhaps apologize to the author for not being willing to pay anywhere near full price for these, sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Besides, I was curious to see how it ends. And no, I didn't pirate them.
Interestingly, something that struck me after diving back into the series five months after I started reading it was how relatively easy it was to get back up to speed. The basics of the story hadn't changed in the interim . . . Miranda, a high school student from Massachusetts, learns that she's actually from the alternate world of Roumania, and our world was just a convenient hidey hole while forces opposed to her deceased father sought to find her for their own purposes. Along for the ride are her two friends Andromeda and Peter Gross, who were supposedly also teenagers but as it turns out were aides to her father that vowed to keep her safe and upon returning to Roumania have been turning back into who they used to be, although the blend of old and new has led to some interesting results.
Her main opponent throughout all this has been the Baroness Ceausescu, who has been playing her own high level political game with current occupiers Germany while doing all kinds of weird magical things and apparently inspiring a truly maniacal level of devotion despite her generally using and/or murdering almost everyone she comes into contact with. But she's a famous stage actress so I guess that forgives a lot of things.
And while that's the basics, on some level its quite possible to skip the first two books and feel like you haven't missed much of anything that couldn't have been taken care of with an info dump into the early chapters. Beyond the premise most of what occurs in those books is a lot of running around and talking and sometimes mystical things but not a lot of forward momentum, which almost makes it seem like the series was conceived as one giant book that got split into four parts for one reason or another.
Thus, lo and behold after hitting the halfway mark it turns out that things start happening. Miranda finally gets in the same room as the Baroness (and reunited with her mother in the process), while poor Peter faces a trial as a formality to the firing squad he's going to face while Andromeda becomes the wacky rom-com best friend this series needed and proceeds to swagger through the book with zero cares in the world beyond making everyone uncomfortable.
Andromeda (or Sasha Prochenko, as she/he is supposed to be) winds up being a revelation and really comes into focus here, a soldier with a great sense of style and very little you-know-whats to give. Earlier in the series it was unclear what was happening with her but with Prochenko finally some sense of direction we're left with a fascinating character that thinks of herself as a man but was once a pretty convincing woman (and may be a werewolf too?) and appears to be afraid of nothing. Park handles the character's assertions of his gender, giving us someone who appears to both sure of himself and fluid (in a weird Calvin and Hobbesesque vibe, most everyone sees Prochenko as a man while Miranda still sees her as Andromeda) while mostly singlehandedly insisting on dragging the plot to some form of conclusion. Whether he's having affairs for political and personal reasons, messing with the Baroness in ways that no other character will dare or simply unnerving everyone with a complete lack of concern for proper manners Prochenko/Andromeda livens up every scene he's in.
He's also the only reason the book feels like its going anywhere, mostly because he forces it. The Baroness' reasons for doing what she does aren't any clearer than in the first book but she seems to have more purpose than in the early stages, even if her impulses tend to undermine her own planning again and again (at least two murders she probably didn't need to do threaten to bring about her downfall in different ways) but as a focal point she remains the corrupted pulse at the heart of the book and as the instigator of all the problems that everyone has to deal with she remains a fascinatingly flawed characters. When her and Prochenko share scenes together the book crackles, as a woman who always gets what she wants meets someone who doesn't care what she wants.
All this is great, I just wish there were more of it because throughout all of this Miranda remains singularly uninteresting, no matter how much the book wants to convince us that all of this is worth going through for her. As with the first two books she's mostly a nonentity her, sparring with the Baroness in minor ways and attempting to save Peter but rarely doing anything to help her own cause beyond trying to get as far away as possible from all this. She doesn't want to rule Roumania or be the White Tyger or even hang out with her real mother all that much . . . while not everyone needs to be sassy and take-charge you'd hope that the main character would at least seize the reins at some point instead of reacting constantly, which is what happens here. It makes her scenes possessed of a strange stasis, marking time until she has no choice but to act when events force her hand.
Yet for all that I have to say this is the first book in the series that really engaged me. The politics, while still unclear, sharpen ever so slightly so you can start to see the outline of the stakes at play. Bringing all the players closer together helps clarify who is supposed to be responsible for what and with the subplot of "Let's all find Miranda" out of the way, the rampant political maneuvering can begin. While Miranda and Peter Gross aren't going to light the world on fire as characters, there's enough charge in Prochenko and the Baroness to make up for it and that tends to spill over into whoever is in their orbit. It also helps that the miasma that seems to seep over the first two books and make it feel like you were reading through a numbing fog has abated, with his subtleties shifting enough so that you don't feel as much like you're inside someone's dream of what the story should be. In fact, I have to give credit to his prose here, which is almost marvelously understated, often depending on you reading or rereading carefully to get certain details. It can work against him (the ending of this book didn't make sense until I started the next one) but overall it suits the atmosphere better than it had in the past, getting closer to the otherworldly vibe underlying all the political stuff that I think the book is shooting for.
But even with the improvements I still have mixed feelings about this series. This is by far the most enjoyable book in the series so far but that still means you have to go through two so-so books to get here . . . and its not like goes from "so-so" to "mindblowing", more like "hey, pretty good". Getting actual action helps matters immensely, but can't make up for an overall sense that the series is just too low-key for its own good. The months long layoff let me come back to this with fresh eyes and I do have a better appreciation for its strengths but I think if I went back and reread the first two books now I don't think I'd find my opinions changed all that much.
October 31, 2014
Superb third volume in this extraordinary series. Miranda and Peter are in the clutches of the increasingly depraved Baroness. Andromeda is free, but poisoned by radiation and drift in her trip;e identity, Political forces are in motion as German power in Roumania wanes, but what will take its place? Miranda, in captivity, but courted by the German ambassador, rejects her role as a Princess and struggles to understand the lessons and plans of her Aunt Aegypta. The Baroness plots murder and celebrates her twisted art which mirrors her profoundly perverse mentality. Peter is imprisoned in appalling conditions and the streets are filled with revolutionary fervour.
This is a dark, strange book, with our heroes sidelined or forced into inactivity as danger grows around them and the Baroness is at her pinnacle of power. Terrible things are loose in the world of Greater Roumania, war is brewing in the East and a suspiciously fascist power is on the rise. The Princess of Roumania notably fails to ascend to her rightful place and set everything to rights in fairy-tale fashion. Straight into the final volume to see how all of this is resolved.
This is a dark, strange book, with our heroes sidelined or forced into inactivity as danger grows around them and the Baroness is at her pinnacle of power. Terrible things are loose in the world of Greater Roumania, war is brewing in the East and a suspiciously fascist power is on the rise. The Princess of Roumania notably fails to ascend to her rightful place and set everything to rights in fairy-tale fashion. Straight into the final volume to see how all of this is resolved.
October 22, 2008
While I liked this the political details were bogging me down, not enough of the fantastical! Ihis is the third in this series I have read, I am not sure I can bother with the fourth.
December 31, 2017
I really, really do like Paul Park's writing - the sentences, the use of language. The problem I have is that I really, really do not care about any of these characters or what happens to them. I just can't get into this story/series and swear that half the time I don't even understand what's going on. But a couple stars just for my appreciation of his writing, in any case.
March 18, 2021
So freaking weird....but I couldn’t put it down.
November 2, 2008
Having read three out of four books in this series, I'm still not sure that I'm even enjoying it. The fact that I'm planning on reading the fourth, must say something but at this point, unless it has a spectacular ending, it won't be a book that I recommend.
The series is often confusing, with an almost muddy writing style that leaves me wondering what exactly is happening. This third book in the series is the first one to avoid this problem; I actually understood what was going on!
I think what keeps me going is that it is so unique. Lots of great concepts that I don't typically see in fantasy novels and an originality that is refreshing. But it has issues. One, even after three books, I don't feel that the main character is well fleshed out or even worth caring about. She's just wishy-washy and lackadaisical. In fact, it's hard to justify calling the girl on the front cover and titled on both this book and the first as the main character at all.
That's one of the other problems -the so called main character is barely in this third book and neither is one of her main side kicks. I think I liked this one best so far, and yet it was almost completely off on a tangent from where the story started.
Still, I'm hoping for the best and feel like if the author can pull it out at the end, I'm going to come out happy having read the series.
The series is often confusing, with an almost muddy writing style that leaves me wondering what exactly is happening. This third book in the series is the first one to avoid this problem; I actually understood what was going on!
I think what keeps me going is that it is so unique. Lots of great concepts that I don't typically see in fantasy novels and an originality that is refreshing. But it has issues. One, even after three books, I don't feel that the main character is well fleshed out or even worth caring about. She's just wishy-washy and lackadaisical. In fact, it's hard to justify calling the girl on the front cover and titled on both this book and the first as the main character at all.
That's one of the other problems -the so called main character is barely in this third book and neither is one of her main side kicks. I think I liked this one best so far, and yet it was almost completely off on a tangent from where the story started.
Still, I'm hoping for the best and feel like if the author can pull it out at the end, I'm going to come out happy having read the series.
May 29, 2009
This is the third book (in a series of four) that was begun in A Princess of Roumania and it's only getting stranger. In fact, this is one of the strangest plots I've come across in some time. In this outing, Miranda learns more about the mysterious hidden world which seems to be populated by people's animal spirits. And the Baroness Ceausescu must be half-crazy and a cold-hearted bitch besides. She's such an odd character with a weird appeal to various men around her. Some of the stranger developments concern Miranda's friend Andromeda who is really Lieutenant Sasha Prochenko in Roumania. Prochenko seems to vacillate between three modes of existence and not always mutually exclusive. He's both a he (Sasha), a she (Andromeda), and at times, a dog. Or a furry he-she. Strangeness abounds. The Hidden World is the next book.
Read
February 5, 2009Critics praised The White Tyger, a novel filled with fantasy, magic, intrigue, drama, and exquisite character portraits, as a fitting third volume in Paul Park's four-part fantasy series. Here, the Baroness__a tragic, complex character who emits evil as much as she evokes sympathy__takes center stage, and the book is really her own. Miranda, of course, is as compelling as ever, particularly when she learns how to navigate between her two worlds simultaneously. Other familiar faces, including the princess's friends, play lesser roles. Although the book ends somewhat unpredictably, it also leaves the teen trio in limbo__perhaps in anticipation of the final installment of the series, The Hidden World (2008).
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
April 19, 2008
This series, which seemed innovative at first and gave a new spin to the "person from our world turns out to be royalty in another world" fantasy genre, just wanders. I don't think the Author really knew, or has decided, where he's going. The characters (though I really like the evil Duchess) just seem to to do the same things over ad over. I'm also incredibly disappointed in the development of the character Andromeda. There's so much potential for exploring issues of sexuality, discovery, angst, triumph, etc. to mine in that character and Park just doesn't do it.
January 27, 2008
For some reason I had the impression that this was the last book in this series...but it's not. When I reached the end of this one, I realized I just didn't care what happened to any of the characters anymore. Oh well.
June 28, 2008
More of the same, although it started to get a little more interesting at the end. Bring on book 4, so I can be done with all this!
November 10, 2008
This book was more focused than the previous ones, but it still hasn't been as good as it could have been.
October 18, 2011
It's just getting weirder and harder to follow. Still, I think I'll be reading the next book.
considering
September 18, 2010Recommended by Powell's for people who like Susanna Clarke
November 2, 2013
So brutal, so involved! Yet so very satisfying.
May 28, 2008
I hope this is not the end of the story.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews