My Rating: 2 hearts
Thoughts on the Novel: Having loved Stacey Jay’s Of Beast and Beauty and in the mood to read another fairy tale retelling, I decided to read
Princess of Thorns. Unfortunately, Princess of Thorns turned out to be nothing
like Of Beast and Beauty!
Where I was expecting a fabulous retelling, Princess of Thorns didn’t
deliver. Admittedly, this might be more my fault than the book’s because I
automatically equated the name of Aurora with Sleeping Beauty and thought
“fairy tale retelling.” Aurora in Princess of Thorns, however, is the daughter of Sleeping Beauty and Princess
of Thorns is very much not even close to a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. I’m
not sure why Jay decided to make her princess’ name Aurora instead of giving
her any other name, but you can see why I’d be confused, right?
Once I got over that, I was left disappointed by the worldbuilding.
The worldbuilding is pretty much nonexistent, and literally the only thing
that’s clear is that in the world of Princess of Thorns, there are ogres and
fairies. Also, the ogres have taken over Aurora’s throne and are trying to kill
her due to some poorly explained prophecy that guarantees they’ll stay in power
forever if they do so. Basically, it reduced the need for the ogres to be
well-developed characters.
Similarly, the main characters were lacking in character development.
Aurora was supposed to be this kickass heroine, but she just exasperated me
with her attempts to pretend that she wouldn’t develop feelings for Niklaas. Niklaas
was even more annoying though because he was constantly bragging about all the women he had slept with. I could never swoon over a guy like that! I didn’t buy the
chemistry between him and Aurora, and thought they’d have been better off as
friends.
A poorly written fantasy, Princess of Thorns was released in December
2014 by Delacorte Press.
Comments
About the Cover: Um, what’s the model supposed to be doing?
Oh, that's unfortunate. I've wanted to give this one a try but when I attempted to read it, I was bored. It sounds like it failed on so many aspects. Boo.
ReplyDeleteAw, I actually liked this one and I really appreciated how it wasn't just a straight-up retelling. Sorry this one didn't work for you. I still have to read Of Beast and Beauty, I've great things about it.
ReplyDeleteSorry this one didn't work for you Z! I really loved Of Beast and Beauty as well, so I was hoping to get to this one at some point. I like that it's not a direct retelling of Sleeping Beauty, more Sleeping Beauty adjacent, but her name being Aurora does throw you off a bit! Thanks for your thoughts:)
ReplyDeleteI haven't read anything by this author, so I'm sorry to hear you didn't like this one. It's good you enjoyed another title by her though, so it shows she IS a good writer. Some books just don't work. As for the cover, I don't know! It looks like she's flying or something. haha
ReplyDelete-Lauren
Aw man, when a fantasy novel lacks world building it makes me so mad. When the character development isn't that fleshed out either, I feel like there isn't much left to work with. Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts on this!
ReplyDeleteSorry this didn't work for you. Still exited to read it someday. Tnx for the review
ReplyDelete