A Posse of Princesses

by Sherwood Smith

• ISBN10: 1611383870
• ISBN13: 9781611383874
• Publish Date: 3 July 2014 (first published 1 March 2008)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Book View Cafe
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 258
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

While the cover of my edition really let the book down, this is an excellent story. Several princesses and princes gather at an event for the Crown Prince of Vesarja, the central and most important kingdom in the area, a chance for him to possibly find a wife. Rhis is one of these princesses and a pivotal character. She finds herself attracted to a scribe, Dandiar, a relationship she's pretty sure won't be encouraged by her family.

Things change when one of the princesses is kidnapped and Rhis and her new friends go to the rescue, learning a lot about themselves and life in the process.

I really did like the story and the characters, I felt it was a little let down at the end, the letters were very scrappy, but overall it was a read I'd recommend and a nice antidote to stories where the girls have no agency.

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

A Posse of Princesses is a wonderfully fun read that will delight any fan of fantasy. It has all the elements one could want, such as princesses who do not believe in being too proper and princes and other young gentlemen for them and the readers to fall in love with, but Smith is able to work with the conventions of fantasy without being trite. The cast of princesses, for one thing, is far from one-dimensional. Rhis in many ways appears at first to be the “classic” heroine, a young pretty girl trained to be proper and not do things like listen to ballads, but the other people she meets teach her there is more than one way to be royal. Taniva is from a country where the women fight as well as the men and where it is a rite of passage to steal something from the rival kingdom. Yuzhyu is from an island nation and speaks a foreign language. Glaen’s family has an interest in shipping. The cast of characters is greatly varied and the greatest strength of the book. Readers will love them all because even the “villains” have some redeeming qualities that make them seem human.


This review was also posted on Pages Unbound Book Reviews.