The Princess Blog

Love of the Sea  by Lauren Masterson  is an indie mermaid princess book I learned about through Twitter. As an ardent love of "The Little Mermaid," I decided to check it out. Even though it isn't a fairy tale adaptation, it has more in common with "The Little Mermaid" than other original mermaid boos I've read such as Rescue Sirens , The Tail of Emily Windsnap , or Deep Blue . Unlike these stories, which contain little to no romance,  Love of the Sea  is about a mermaid who falls in love with a human and visits his kingdom in the hopes of winning him over. However, there are a few key differences between this novel and the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. In Love of the Sea , the mermaid princess intends to recruit the human prince to rule her underwater kingdom and become part of her world instead of the other way around. I found the story to be a bit lacking in the romance department, but the world-building was exceptional. Princess Asrai has been hid...

The School for Good and Evil  is a middle grade book series released in 2013 with a similar plot to Ever After High  and Descendants  and with all the ambition of Harry Potter . Considering how popular this fairy tale-inspired series seems to be, I'm surprised I never heard of it until a little over a week ago when I learned that Netflix is turning it into a movie . Perhaps one of the reasons it was so overlooked is its super generic title, which sounds like it could be about literally anything. Most fictional stories are about the battle between good and evil. A better title would have been The School for Princesses and Witches , which would have been more eye-catching to lovers of fairy tales. Maybe the vagueness is good, though, since this book contains many horror elements that could scare off young fairy tale aficionados or particularly sensitive older ones like myself. When I began reading The School for Good and Evil , I had many questions that were mostly resolved...

At this point, I think the game should change its name from Time Princess to Time Demon because it has a significantly higher number of stories about demons ( but not the evil kind ) than princesses, the latest one being no exception. Miss Kitty's Antiques begins as a murder mystery  and evolves into a story about ancient Japanese mythology. I was surprised by many of the twists and turns it took and pleased with the touching romance. The main character is a cat yokai, which  means she is a cat spirit who can transform into a human, and she has some kawaii over-the-top cat-inspired outfits to match. Lady Mangetsu is a cat spirit posing as a human who runs an antique shop as a cover for her quest to find the Origin Pearl to save her dear friend, Yuta, a ninetails fox yokai. Her life is already pretty interesting before she gets framed for murder when she discovers a dead body. The first half of the book is set up like a typical murder mystery, but the plot takes a drastic tur...

Court of Swans by Melanie Dickerson  is a book that was recommended to me a long time ago that I just got around to reading it. I was impressed by Melanie's vast array of fairy tale retellings , especially as a traditionally published author. Her books are classified as Christian Fiction, which gives her a pass for telling more traditional versions of these stories instead of the obligatory contemporary spin  that requires women to become warriors and swear off men. What makes her books unique is that they retell these stories from a historical perspective of how they could have actually happened. The magical elements have been removed and replaced with metaphorical interpretations. It was interesting how she retold the story of "The Wild Swans" without anyone transforming into a swan. This book takes place in 14th century London and tells the story of a young woman named Delia whose brothers were arrested by the king on false charges. As the only one who was not placed...

What if princesses were not daughters of kings, but members of an army trained for the destruction of mankind? That would explain why they are always  such powerful fighters these days. The new anime series  Love After World Domination  does just that, but with a twist. It has a  Power Rangers -inspired setting with a plot reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet . In the same way that Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle  parodies the trope of princesses getting kidnapped, this anime takes the modern trope of princesses being skilled warriors  and takes it in an unexpected direction. That's just one of the reasons that Love After World Domination is my favorite new anime this season. The show starts like any other Power Rangers series with a team of five color-coded warriors (sentai) fighting against a female-led legion of monsters. It is then revealed that this rivalry is a ruse, at least on the part of the Red Ranger, Fudo, and the opposing Reaper Princess, Desum...

It's been nearly two months since the official announcement that The Princess  is coming to Hulu on July 1st, and we finally have our first trailer. It looks, well... pretty much exactly how it sounded in the original press release. The trailer is filled with snark about how this is an R-rated princess movie. The tone is reminiscent of Shrek , even  using the song "Bad Reputation,"  which was also featured during a key scene in Dreamworks' princess parody . The discrepancy here is that Shrek  was released during a time when fairy tales were clean and princesses were gentle , so it was a fresh take on the genre in the year 2001. The Princess  is being released in 2022, a year when butt-kicking princesses have become the standard , yet the trailer presents it as an irreverent novelty. The first 30 seconds of The Princess  trailer begin with fairy tale imagery (or the closest thing they could find in this film) with a narration that states "Once upon a time i...

There are few books that I would equate the experience of reading to physical torture, but Spindle Fire  and Winter Glass  by Lexa Hillyer managed to accomplish just that. I would never have expected to dislike an adaptation of "Sleeping Beauty"  so much after reading so many good ones , and yet here we are. It isn't that Ms. Hillyer doesn't know how to write. Indeed, it's quite the opposite. She seems to think of writing as a way to show off her impressive array of the English language and very little else. With no sense of story structure, the plot and characters in these books fall to the wayside, leaving no motivation on the reader's part to complete them. I received both books from the Spindle Fire  duology as a gift and felt obliged to finish them for the sake of completion but took no pleasure in this task. Spindle Fire  is a re-imagining of "Sleeping Beauty" in which the cursed princess, Aurora, has a half-sister named Isbe. Isbe is blind be...