A Posse of Princesses | ||||||||
Sherwood Smith | ||||||||
YA Angst/Norilana Books, 297 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Georges T. Dodds
While my recent steady diet of 19th century boys' adventure dime novels (where female heroines are as rare as kangaroos on
Mars) might have given me a somewhat misogynistic view of women heroines, remarkably, it was not, on this basis, that I had
trouble with A Posse of Princesses. Given that I have a teenage daughter
of my own, I can attest that the insecurities and interpersonal interactions portrayed during the time the young princes
and princesses were hobknobing together were well portrayed, and while the existence of a posse of princesses in the
pseudo-feudal world of the novel seems unlikely, it didn't really detract from the tale. Really, it was the last quarter
of the novel that seemed to go awry.
Rhis and her posse seem to manage quite well throughout without more than a minor incidental use of magic, but when all hope
of escape seems lost, Rhis calls upon her sister for magical help. OK, a bit of a change in direction, but Rhis had been
lugging the amulet around with her, so why not use it? In escaping, Rhis is drawn to a diamond-like stone atop a tower,
which she retrieves before rejoining her posse (who themselves all managed to escape with minimal magic use), and Prince
Lios' own posse. When they are caught at the border, Rhis threatens to throw the stone into chasm if they are not
allowed to escape, and she wakes up some days later exhausted. It turns out the stone is a powerful magical artefact
set over the city to protect it, that only a certain number of such stones exist, that they may impose a nefarious
enthralling control over the person holding them, and that a far-away wizard-king of dubious character, who may or may
not be enthralled himself, would very much like to collect as many of the stones as possible. Seem familiar? Seem
ominous? Seem like Rhis might be the lynch-pin in a titanic struggle between good and evil?
One might expect that Rhis, as one who unexpectedly -- given that she had no magical training -- was capable of handling
the stone without being enthralled, would prove to be some sort of prophesied protector of the stones, or have to run
off and dump them in some volcano. It turns out that the stone has been handed over to the magical authorities, never
to be heard of again, Rhis is told she can't see the prince she loves (nor he, her) for five years, and she is sent off
on some vague semi-magical training, semi-magical because as an heir to a throne she cannot be a full magic user. Either
the author is glaringly setting up a sequel, or the entire magic stone episode is a completely aleatory and pointless tangent.
One can forgive the romantic notion that even after the five years apart, Rhis and her prince are still in love
and will seemingly live happily together forever after, but barring a sequel, the stone incident mars what would
otherwise be an entertaining and well-written young adult fantasy.
Georges Dodds is a research scientist whose interests lie predominantly in both English and French pre-1950 imaginative fiction. Besides reviews and articles at SFSite and in fanzines such as Argentus, Pulpdom and WARP, he has published peer-reviewed articles in fields ranging from folklore to water resource management. He is the creator and co-curator of The Ape-Man, His Kith and Kin a website exploring thematic precursors of Tarzan of the Apes, as well as works having possibly served as Edgar Rice Burroughs' documentary sources. The close to 100 e-texts include a number of first time translations from the French by himself and others. Georges is also the creator and curator of a website dedicated to William Murray Graydon (1864-1946), a prolific American-born author of boys' adventures. The website houses biographical, and bibliographical materials, as well as a score of novels, and over 100 short stories. |
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