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tsbowman1124's review against another edition
garymilczarek's review against another edition
5.0
Spell binding
Wow. Spell binding. And I didn't think I even liked fantasy. I chose this after reading a review by John Crowley, and I am not disappointed.
Wow. Spell binding. And I didn't think I even liked fantasy. I chose this after reading a review by John Crowley, and I am not disappointed.
monicajosephine's review against another edition
2.0
It doesn't happen very often that I finish the first book in a series and have no interest in reading the next. Many reviews have already said what I think about this book: confusing, poor execution of an interesting idea, uninteresting heroine, etc. I won't be reading the remainder of the series.
braydin's review
2.0
I really wanted to like this book and it does have a number of good points. Well-written, with a premise that I love, but I did not get to the point where I really cared about what happened to any of the characters and the pace of the novel was glacial at points. It does pick up a bit towards the end, enough so that I will probably give book 2 a shot but I can't help but feel that an opportunity was lost here.
smcleish's review
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in April 2007.
One author who is mentioned several times in the quotations printed on the back of A Princess of Roumania is [a:Philip Pullman|3618|Philip Pullman|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1196023994p2/3618.jpg]. Now, anyone who has read my reviews of the His Dark Materials trilogy will know that Pullman is an author I think massively overrated, and so I found this somewhat off-putting. The praise I had read for A Princess of Roumania in the end persuaded me to give it a try, and I am glad that I did. While I can understand the comparison to Pullman, Park has more interesting ideas, a more atmospheric setting, and, above all, the ability to write convincing characters; while many consider His Dark Materials a classic, A Princess of Roumania is much more deserving of the label.
The story is simple; in fact, it is the ultimate fantasy cliché: the lost heir. Park mixes it with alternative universes, also not especially new: hiding the lost heir in our world is something I planned to use in an abandoned novel I began in 1991, among other uses of the idea. The first slightly unusual aspect to A Princess of Roumania is that our world is the fictional one, magically created solely to hide the princess Miranda from her family's enemies. Park's Roumania is a great power in decline, threatened principally by the Germans; her father was wrongfully accused of betraying Roumania to them twenty years earlier, an event which led to the elevation of one of the Roumanian generals as the power behind the throne. The baby Miranda was hidden by her aunt, an adept of magic, with the aid of a pair of books: each describing the history of a world, one real and one fictional; when both books are destroyed, the spell is broken and Miranda is returned to the "real" world. An odd quirk means she's fifteen even though twenty years have passed: this is not explained (though of course future novels in the series may do so) and suggests that the flow of time in magical worlds is different from that in the real world, an idea which goes back to folk stories where people kidnapped by fairies find that after a single night everyone they knew is dead of old age.
The pace is slow; the point of the novel being to establish the characters and set the stage for their interactions. Quite a lot does actually happen - it just feels relaxed to read it. Park doesn't quite manage the (surely impossible) task of persuading the reader that his Roumania is more real than the world we live in, but he comes closer than a lot of writers. It is the characters which really excel. This makes Park's work reminiscent in truth of one of the other authors to whom he is compared on the back of A Princess of Roumania, [a:John Crowley|52074|John Crowley|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1223869920p2/52074.jpg], who is one of my favourite authors of all. Involving, rather than exciting, is the order of the day; and A Princess of Roumania is guaranteed a place on my reads of the year.
One author who is mentioned several times in the quotations printed on the back of A Princess of Roumania is [a:Philip Pullman|3618|Philip Pullman|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1196023994p2/3618.jpg]. Now, anyone who has read my reviews of the His Dark Materials trilogy will know that Pullman is an author I think massively overrated, and so I found this somewhat off-putting. The praise I had read for A Princess of Roumania in the end persuaded me to give it a try, and I am glad that I did. While I can understand the comparison to Pullman, Park has more interesting ideas, a more atmospheric setting, and, above all, the ability to write convincing characters; while many consider His Dark Materials a classic, A Princess of Roumania is much more deserving of the label.
The story is simple; in fact, it is the ultimate fantasy cliché: the lost heir. Park mixes it with alternative universes, also not especially new: hiding the lost heir in our world is something I planned to use in an abandoned novel I began in 1991, among other uses of the idea. The first slightly unusual aspect to A Princess of Roumania is that our world is the fictional one, magically created solely to hide the princess Miranda from her family's enemies. Park's Roumania is a great power in decline, threatened principally by the Germans; her father was wrongfully accused of betraying Roumania to them twenty years earlier, an event which led to the elevation of one of the Roumanian generals as the power behind the throne. The baby Miranda was hidden by her aunt, an adept of magic, with the aid of a pair of books: each describing the history of a world, one real and one fictional; when both books are destroyed, the spell is broken and Miranda is returned to the "real" world. An odd quirk means she's fifteen even though twenty years have passed: this is not explained (though of course future novels in the series may do so) and suggests that the flow of time in magical worlds is different from that in the real world, an idea which goes back to folk stories where people kidnapped by fairies find that after a single night everyone they knew is dead of old age.
The pace is slow; the point of the novel being to establish the characters and set the stage for their interactions. Quite a lot does actually happen - it just feels relaxed to read it. Park doesn't quite manage the (surely impossible) task of persuading the reader that his Roumania is more real than the world we live in, but he comes closer than a lot of writers. It is the characters which really excel. This makes Park's work reminiscent in truth of one of the other authors to whom he is compared on the back of A Princess of Roumania, [a:John Crowley|52074|John Crowley|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1223869920p2/52074.jpg], who is one of my favourite authors of all. Involving, rather than exciting, is the order of the day; and A Princess of Roumania is guaranteed a place on my reads of the year.
rosseroo's review
2.0
Can't recall where I heard about this book, or what I heard that was compelling enough for me to seek it out. In any event, I did so, and by about halfway through, I strongly considered not finishing it. Had I realized it was the first in a quartet, I definitely would have stopped, because I basically slogged through 180 pages just to see how it would end, and it's basically a setup for future books.
The premise is that there's an adopted teenage girl in present-day Massachusetts who turns out to be the hidden princess of Roumania (aka Romania), or rather, the Roumanian Empire of an alternate 19th-century world in which England has sunk beneath the waves, and there is some kind of German plot to absorb Romania. The first bit of the book ably establishes the heroine and her two friends, before switching to this alternate world where various forces are seeking her.
The book's main problem is that much is made of the girl's importance, but it's awfully unclear why she's important, other than some kind of link to a legend. Similarly, the various machinations to find her feel completely ungrounded, and the geopolitical arrangements of this alternate world are confusing at best. It often has the feel of a book that's the second in a series and requires full and complete background from the first book -- but this is the first book, so it doesn't have that excuse.
As atmospheric as the book can be, and despite some compelling scenes here and there, the characters just weren't fleshed out enough for me to care -- especially their motivations. All in all, this was a dud for me -- although I could see that if you were committed to the whole series, it might be fine in that context.
The premise is that there's an adopted teenage girl in present-day Massachusetts who turns out to be the hidden princess of Roumania (aka Romania), or rather, the Roumanian Empire of an alternate 19th-century world in which England has sunk beneath the waves, and there is some kind of German plot to absorb Romania. The first bit of the book ably establishes the heroine and her two friends, before switching to this alternate world where various forces are seeking her.
The book's main problem is that much is made of the girl's importance, but it's awfully unclear why she's important, other than some kind of link to a legend. Similarly, the various machinations to find her feel completely ungrounded, and the geopolitical arrangements of this alternate world are confusing at best. It often has the feel of a book that's the second in a series and requires full and complete background from the first book -- but this is the first book, so it doesn't have that excuse.
As atmospheric as the book can be, and despite some compelling scenes here and there, the characters just weren't fleshed out enough for me to care -- especially their motivations. All in all, this was a dud for me -- although I could see that if you were committed to the whole series, it might be fine in that context.
graculus's review
1.0
Another bookswapping experience, if I recall correctly, this one the first in a series of four books.
The basic premise of A Princess of Roumania is that beloved by many books for teens - our protagonist Miranda Popescu, herself a teenager, is not what she seems and is instead really royalty from elsewhere. In addition to this, her two closest friends are not really just her friends but loyal subjects sent to protect her.
So far so good, except I found the prose incredibly hard to get into and the character of Miranda so unlikable that frankly I didn't care when she was placed in peril. Which is never a good sign for a standalone book, let alone the first of a series.
If you're so inclined, the series continues in [b:The Tourmaline|640017|The Tourmaline|Paul Park|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176612229s/640017.jpg|626218], but I know I won't be continuing after failing to get through this volume without a strong desire to throw it at the wall about a third of the way in...
The basic premise of A Princess of Roumania is that beloved by many books for teens - our protagonist Miranda Popescu, herself a teenager, is not what she seems and is instead really royalty from elsewhere. In addition to this, her two closest friends are not really just her friends but loyal subjects sent to protect her.
So far so good, except I found the prose incredibly hard to get into and the character of Miranda so unlikable that frankly I didn't care when she was placed in peril. Which is never a good sign for a standalone book, let alone the first of a series.
If you're so inclined, the series continues in [b:The Tourmaline|640017|The Tourmaline|Paul Park|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176612229s/640017.jpg|626218], but I know I won't be continuing after failing to get through this volume without a strong desire to throw it at the wall about a third of the way in...
wyvernfriend's review
3.0
This is a complicated and involved story about a girl who grows up in our world and finds herself one day in another world, Her friends come with her but are changed by the change in worlds. She has to work out what her place in the world is and how to keep herself alive, also she has to find out what the clues left for her mean. She's unsure who to trust and whether the people she's trusting are real.
It's not a bad book but it didn't have me rushing out to find the next book in the series. What it did leave me with is an urge to find out more about that period and what "really" happened.
It's not a bad book but it didn't have me rushing out to find the next book in the series. What it did leave me with is an urge to find out more about that period and what "really" happened.
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