Maiden & Princess

Author Daniel Haack, whose same-sex picture-book fairy-tale romance, Prince & Knight, came out last year (2018), joins forces with co-author Isabel Galupo in this return to the form. Invited to the prince's ball, the eponymous maiden, who fights alongside the prince as a warrior, and considers him

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a brother, isn't initially inclined to go, until her mother convinces her to give it a try. Once at the ball, the maiden feels pressured by the other attendees, who seem to think she would be the perfect wife for him. Escaping to the balcony, she meets a beautiful stranger with a kind voice, and is immediately smitten. It turns out that the maiden has met her match, not in the form of the prince, but in the princess...

Although its heart is in the right place, somehow Maiden & Princess just didn't win me over, the same way that Prince & Knight did. The occasional instances of awkwardness in the rhyming text that I perceived in the earlier book seemed more frequent here, and were distracting. I'm not sure why it was necessary for Daniel Haack to have a co-author for Maiden & Princess, or what effect that had upon the text - perhaps having two authors made the weaknesses I perceived in the first title more pronounced? Whatever the case might be, I definitely noticed the textual hiccups more frequently here. Leaving that issue aside, I also found the artwork, done by British illustrator Becca Human, rather unappealing. It was colorful and expressive, but somehow the style didn't suit me, and felt distracting. In trying to articulate why that is, at first I thought that perhaps I simply preferred the work of Stevie Lewis, who illustrated Prince & Knight. While this is certainly true, I think it's also that Human's style was reminiscent of the old Prince Valiant comic strip, if a overly pink and purple rainbow had thrown up all over it. That is, perhaps, too harsh a criticism for illustrations that simply didn't appeal to me, but there you have it. This was a two-and-a-half-star title for me, although I would still recommend it to those seeking same-sex fairy-tales, given the dearth of other options.

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