Bound To Stay Bound

View MARC Record
 

Full Text Reviews:

Booklist - 10/01/2014 Forget the notion of traditional princesses. At Pennyroyal Academy, princesses are trained to fight witches and save kingdoms, and, yes, knights learn to slay dragons. Which brings us to Evie’s dilemma: she is training to be a princess, yet she was raised by dragons and was brought to the academy by a dragon-slaying knight wannabe. Larson has crafted a dark Grimm-like fairy tale, with teens training to defeat evil, save villages, and find their own identities in the process. Familiar names like Cinderella and Snow White dot the landscape, while tongue-in-cheek characters like Rumpledshirtsleeves and the Fairy Drillsergeant are part of a no-nonsense faculty charged with readying the girls for combat. Yet the focus and detailed character development is on the young women, their hopes and dreams (sometimes dreadfully scary), their real fears, and their disappointments in themselves, their friends, and the adults around them. Since the book ends with some of the princesses and knights selected to return for another school year, Larson has left the door open for a welcome second year at Pennyroyal with Evie and her friends. - Copyright 2014 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 07/01/2014 Gr 5–8—Pennyroyal Academy trains princesses and knights to battle the witches and dragons that encroach ever more rapidly on the kingdom's citizens. Cadet Eleven (Evie) does not know her name and fears sharing her past, but she desperately wants to succeed as a princess recruit. As she journeys to the Academy to enroll, she escapes a witch's clutches with the help of knight-in-training Remington, a boy who annoys and intrigues Evie. Once arrived, the heroine makes friends in her unit who support her through the Academy's trials despite the malevolent tricks of Malora, a princess candidate whose nastiness puzzles the protagonist. The Academy's final wilderness challenge forces Evie to face her fears and her past. The intriguing premise of Larson's first novel falters under uneven execution. Fantasy readers will indubitably relish the magical kingdom's fearsome witches and dragons, set in an enchanted landscape of pitfalls and beauties. The assigned challenges add a perilous element that advances the story's pacing. However, the way Larson reveals Evie's past is nothing short of confusing. Readers unravel the protagonist's backstory over time, but Larson's purposeful inconsistencies seem bungled rather than cleverly diverting. Erratic characterizations lead to mercurial behavior and odd comings and goings. Most awkward are the abrupt transitions from one scene to the next. The story lacks a narrative flow, making baffling jumps that leave events unconnected. Adventure fantasy readers would be better off with a Shannon Hale novel or Michael Buckley's "Sisters Grimm" series (Abrams).—Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

View MARC Record
Loading...



  • Copyright © Bound to Stay Bound Books, Inc. All rights reserved.
  • Privacy Policy