The Forgotten Sisters

After an extended visit to the capitol city, Miri is homesick for Mt. Eskel. She's anxious to return to her family and get on with her life -- but a last-minute request from the king throws all of her plans into confusion. With the nation on the brink of war, the king must forge an alliance with a

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neighboring country, and for that, a royal bride is needed. Miri, as a Princess Academy graduate, is expected to travel to where three royal cousins live in a remote, swampy area, and see that they are trained in all ways befitting princesses. When Miri arrives in the swamp, she discovers that the royal cousins have been living in poverty, hunting their own food, and sleeping on the ground in their little linder house. The girls have as little training as Miri and her friends had at the start of their own Princess Academy days -- and less inclination to cooperate with their tutor! But as Miri gets to know her new charges, she finds herself beginning to care for them and respect them for their unique strengths, and they eventually learn to trust and respect her, too. But, isolated as they are in the swamp, it's hard to know what's happening in the kingdom. Is the Princess Academy still on, or is war already raging through the land?

I do love this series, which is populated throughout with strong female characters in interesting settings. It's not strictly necessary to read the other two books before you read this one -- the story stands on its own -- but the book does frequently reference characters and events from previous books, so I'd recommend starting at the beginning of the series. For readers familiar with the series, I'll say that I liked this one slightly more than Palace of Stone, but not quite as much as the original Princess Academy. But I liked all three quite well, so it's just a matter of degree.

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This book is about a girl named Miri. She is sent by the king to go to a swamp. At the swamp she has to train three girls to be princesses.
I liked this book because of the characters personalities. I recommend this book.

I'm sorry, I just can't read this. I struggled through until Miri was in the swamp and trying to figure out how to teach the sisters, but I've hit my limit. The only question in my mind is, who's setting Miri up for failure? I mean, besides the author, who had to make a lot of fiat decisions to let

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the plotter set this up. The chief delegate, the king (or he's just being utterly manipulated), someone else? The chief delegate "snatched away the coin bag"? Really? I could, barely, see Miri saying nothing - but he just stole Prince Steffan's money in front of him, and the prince said nothing. And they sent a trained teacher _and_ more guards than there were girls to the mountain, and on this trip it's Miri alone? Uh huh. Sorry. The plot holes are just too blasted big to accept. She will, of course, conquer all obstacles, teach the girls wonders (and learn from them too), return in time...and I really hope that this time the chief delegate will be eliminated, he's too boring to be a return villain again. Oh yes, and Katar is utterly incompetent as a delegate. She has made _no_ allies in all this time? Surely it's not only Mount Eskel that the chief delegate has been attacking. But all Katar can think of is to ask Miri to produce (another) miracle. Right. She needs to go back to school, or have a mentor, or something - she's worse than no delegate, for the mountain. I won't finish this book and I won't (try to) read any others. Pity, I did like the first book.

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The third and final Princess Academy book. Miri is about to return to her mountain home when she is given one last task - to travel to a remote swampy region and train three sisters to become princesses.

I was trying to work out why I consider this a "gentle story", since it's not exactly devoid of

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dangerous situations, nor does it treat those situations light-heartedly. On the contrary. There's the threat of war, and corruption, and people grieving for lost family members (amongst other things).

I concluded that it has a lot to do with Miri. She is secure in her identity and her relationships. And she's confident that, if things go wrong, she will do her utmost to resolve things - not necessarily that she'll succeed but she knows she'll try anyway, and she focuses on that.
So she's able to be optimistic and maintain a sense of humour.

I enjoyed The Forgotten Sisters - there was more adventure, and more plot twists, than I had expected.

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Wow.  Ladylike *and* tough... to the max.  A bit too hard-core adventure for me, personally, but a page-turner for the right audience.  And, like, the first two books, the world-building is amazing.  I absolutely love linder stone, and Hale's poetry & songs, and the *small dose* of political

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intrigue.  I love learning about life in a marsh, where there's nothing solid all around.  I especially love the fact that virtually every character has a full-on backstory - even the bad guys aren't evil, but real, complex people.  And I really love the 'solution.'

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I really enjoyed this novel. Watching Miri use her wits to accomplish the seemingly impossible is delightful. I also like that there are real, difficult problems but courage and honesty accomplish more than one would think. I liked the ending especially.

For more reviews, gifs, Cover Snark and more, visit A Reader of Fictions.

Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy remains one of my favorite books. There’s nothing like classic Shannon Hale novels, if I can call novels from the early 2000s classics. Well, they are to me, so I will. In more recent years,

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though, I haven’t been quite as entranced by Hale’s fiction. Despite that, I couldn’t just walk away from this series. Hopes spring eternal for me, as it does for the unassailable goodwill of Miri Larendaughter. My hope was excellently rewarded with The Forgotten Sisters, which hearkens more closely to Princess Academy.

The Forgotten Sisters isn’t The Princess Academy for me, but it was much closer to what I’d been expecting from a sequel than Palace of Stone was. For one thing, in a very different fashion, the princess academy is back. More accurately, there’s a new princess academy. Just as Miri was finally going to head home to Mount Eskel after celebrating Britta’s wedding to Prince Steffan, the King called her to him with a new request: that she tutor three royal cousins as potential brides in an alliance with the nation of Stora.

Every part of me wishes that I could get all the people reading The Selection to read this series instead. For one thing, this series came almost ten years prior. For another, it’s better written. Finally, it’s full of feminism. The premises really aren’t that different, in that, at least in books one and three, they center around the selection of a future queen from a group being properly trained and auditioned.

The reason that the royal cousins need training is that they’d been, as the title indicates, largely forgotten. The royal cousins actually don’t even remember they’re royal, since they’ve spent their childhoods hunting caimans, fishing, and surviving by their own devices. They live in a swampy region that’s difficult to get to, as Miri discovers, fainting upon arriving at their door.

Miri’s the heroine of the series, not because she’s the most politically important figure, but because she’s the motivating force. Miri’s kind, optimistic, clever, and focused on justice. Just because she’s nice does not mean that she ever lets anyone take advantage of her. She’ll resort to whatever means she must in order to take on underhanded foes.

Even better, though, The Forgotten Sisters isn’t the Miri show. Though she’s the uniting figure and central to the plot, it’s not all about Miri. She very much could not have done this alone. Astrid, Felissa, and Susanna, the girls she’s been sent to tutor, may be rough about the edges, but they’re all very strong, both because of the life they’ve lived and their natures. Indeed, they’re strong in different ways. Felissa, for example, has strong emotions and compassion, which benefit her and the others.

Perhaps most touching for me was the story of Queen Sabet. She hasn’t played a huge role up until now, and The Forgotten Sisters doesn’t always show her in the best light. Ultimately, though, she gets a strong character arc. In fact, look at any female character in this book and you’ll see that she gets an empowering character arc. It’s really wonderful.

Romance isn’t so strongly an aspect in The Forgotten Sisters. I do like Peder and Miri’s slowly deepening relationship throughout the books. Their love is a steady undercurrent to the novel. I do also like the ship that develops at the end View Spoiler », at least with the proviso of taking it slowly. It all plays out really well.

From the epilogue, I’m not sure if there will be another book in the series, but I rather hope so. If not, this has been a delightful conclusion to the series.

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3.5 stars

In this, the 3rd (and final) book in the Princess Academy series, Miri is about to head home to the mountain with her boyfriend Peder, but she is called back to see the King and Queen at the last minute. They have “asked” her to travel to a swampy area in the kingdom where the king’s

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three girl cousins live; she is requested to be a tutor to train them to become princesses. The King plans to offer one of the three to a neighbouring monarch in order to prevent a war.

I enjoyed this. Of course, the sisters were nothing like princesses and it took a while to convince them to try (though there were extenuating factors, like not having time to do any lessons), so it was somewhat amusing at first, too. There was a section in the middle that slowed down a bit, but when a war started, anyway, it picked up again. I feel like it was a nice wrap-up to the series.

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I had fun with this series. I recommend.