Review of Princess Academy: The Graphic Novel, by Shannon Hale and Victoria Ying

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Starred Review 0

Princess Academy

The Graphic Novel

by Shannon Hale
illustrated by Victoria Ying
color by Elena Dall’aglio

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2026. 284 pages.
Review written August 23, 2026, from a copy ordered via Amazon.com and signed by the author.
Starred Review

I ordered two copies of this book for my two 11-year-old nieces (different families) in time to have them signed by Shannon Hale at the National Book Festival. And – I had to wait in line so long, I got the entire book read!

I read and loved the original Newbery Honor-winning book back in 2005, and listened to the audiobook in 2008, so it’s been a long time, but I know the story well. I enjoyed the graphic novel, and I can’t think of anything important that it left out, though of course it’s much quicker to read than the original book.

I like the way they show that people from the village of Mount Eskel like to sing, but having words for songs and musical notes dancing across the pages, especially starting each chapter. That reminded me… and sure enough I checked, and each chapter of the original book also begins with a song. The addition of musical notes and the words flying in the air makes them come across more as songs than poems in the graphic novel.

I also like how the graphic novel portrays quarry speech – when the villagers of Mount Eskel can speak to one another across distances through the special stone of their home. In the graphic novel, these show as golden bubbles, with pictures and words inside them, but you get more of a feeling of what’s going on, and the author doesn’t need as many words of description.

Other than that, I’m not sure how well the book works as a stand-alone graphic novel, since I’m reading into it everything I already know about the story. But as far as I can tell, it gets the same ideas across in fewer words because of the visual impact of the pictures.

And the pictures are well done. I can keep better track of the various characters than when I was only visualizing them in my own head. They show Mount Eskel as a beautiful and brightly colored place.

I’ve forgotten to tell what the book’s about. A small mountain village is disrupted when the kingdom’s priests have performed divination and determined that the future princess will come from their village. So all the girls within a few years of coming of age are taken to a princess academy to learn skills like reading, writing, arithmetic, etiquette, and diplomacy. At the end of the year, there will be a ball and the prince will choose his bride.

Our protagonist Miri enjoys learning at the academy, and hopes to help her village with what she’s learned. She’s not sure she wants to leave her mountain. Besides, she has a handsome friend at home that she’s maybe having feelings for. Does she want to marry a stranger in exchange for power?

I do still hope that people (my nieces) will want to move on to the plain text book. It necessarily has more nuance – but the story did translate well into this new medium.

One other note: I put the original book on my Young Adult page because, after all, it’s about young people getting married. This graphic novel is a little more explicit that the marriage won’t happen until the chosen princess comes of age, and the style of the illustrations is more geared to middle grades than to high school, so I’m going to list this on the Children’s Fiction page.

shannonhale.com
victoriaying.com

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Review of Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay, by Lex Croucher

Audiobooks, Fantasy 0

Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay

by Lex Croucher
read by Kishore Walker and Theodore Taylor

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2026. 12 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written August 26, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

This book is a sequel to Gwen and Art Are Not in Love, where we’ve got an alternate-reality medieval England featuring descendants of King Arthur. You should read the first book first, and then, like me, you’ll be delighted that there’s a sequel and you can spend more time with these characters.

But the events of the first book have left their mark. Gabe is now king, and he doesn’t feel up to the task, and he keeps having panic attacks that get him hiding in a closet. And Bridget has what amounts to PTSD – except of course there’s no name for that in medieval times. And both of those conditions are messing up the budding romances from the end of the first book. On top of that, there are rumblings in the country about the “Lancelot Laws” – that it’s okay for men to love men and women to love women. Not everyone’s happy about that, and I’m afraid the Catholic church hosts the main opposition.

In this book, they go on a quest. Gabe has an aide who amounts to a publicist, and she convinces him to assemble his own Round Table of knights and go on a quest to verify the reported sightings from Arthurian legend – a Questing Beast, a person purporting to be the Green Knight, another said to be the Lady of the Lake, and of course the Grail. This way, Gabriel’s subjects will get to know him.

So the quest throws them into a company that includes the two couples in question, and they track down each reported Arthurian legend. Most of them indeed have a natural explanation – but there’s a touch of wonder thrown in before the book ends that I did enjoy.

I hate to say it, because I loved the book, but this one felt a bit long. The couples went back and forth on being harmonious or at odds with one another, and the quest didn’t feel very focused, kind of wandering from one thing to another. On the other hand, I enjoyed the characters, and it’s not like mental health issues would have been easily resolved in medieval times – these are handled well.

Bottom line: Read the first book first. If you enjoy it, and want more from those characters, I’m happy to report that you can read on.

lexcroucher.co.uk

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Review of Brigands and Breadknives, by Travis Baldree

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Brigands and Breadknives

by Travis Baldree
read by the Author

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 8 hours, 25 minutes.
Review written July 13, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Brigands and Breadknives is the third cozy fantasy novel for adults that I’ve read from Travis Baldree, and now I’m sad that I’ve read all three he’s written so far. I’m happy, though, to discover an author whose books I love so much and who seems to be young enough to write lots more.

This is not a romance – it’s a tale of friendship and adventuring and navigating a sort of midlife crisis.

Do read the other two books before this one, because there are hints dropped of what went before. This one features Fern, the Ratkin who sold her bookshop in the seaside town where she first met her friend Viv the Orc lady to move to Thune and start a new bookshop there, right next to Viv’s coffee shop, Legends and Lattes.

But after Fern moves and her new bookshop in Thune is doing fine, she’s still discontented. It still feels like there’s a hole in her life. She doesn’t know what she wants, but it’s not this. She gets drunk and makes a promise to tell Viv how she’s feeling and apologize for all the trouble Viv had to set Fern up here.

But instead of telling Viv that night, Fern falls asleep in a cart – and a day and a half later wakes up to find she’s in a cart driven by a fabled adventurer known as the Elf Maiden. She’s 500 years old, and Fern has sold books about her. She’s got a chaos goblin in the cart and is currently on a mission to deliver the goblin to another town in exchange for a very high bounty.

And one thing leads to another, and Fern ends up going along on the quest, and even helping during life-threatening situations. Because the bounty is so incredibly high, there are many other adventurers who want a piece of the action. Even more threatening is the orc who doesn’t want any bounty but just wants the goblin dead. Along with anyone who will keep them from killing her.

So there’s lots of adventure, including fixes you’re afraid they really can’t get out of. (When I find myself reminding myself it’s a book and there’s no way the author will let that character die – will they? – I know the author has done a great job of raising the stakes.) But it’s also an exploration of friendship and life purpose, and simply a wonderful story.

I’ve decided that the new label of “cozy fantasy” is exactly what I was looking for when I started reading young adult fantasy as an adult – but now YA fantasy has moved away from. It’s not super dark, isn’t bogged down with world-building details, and has the feeling of ordinary people doing ordinary things – with a dash of magic involved. (In this case, there’s no obvious magic, but the fantasy characters make it firmly a fantasy world.)

Oh wait, did I say no magic? The elf maiden has a sword, an Elder Blade that was forged with the spirit of a warrior, and which talks. Well, after meeting this sword, we then discover that the chaos goblin has somewhere picked up an Elder Blade that’s now a breadknife. An Elder Blade in Reduced Circumstances, so to speak. So yes, there’s plenty of humor in this tale as well.

Why is it for adults and not teens? For starters, Fern is over forty years old and has adult concerns. I still find this refreshing in a tale. But there’s no need for content warnings if a teen picks it up. Nice and cozy – and a joy to listen to.

Oh, and the author was already an audiobook narrator before he wrote his own books, so he does a fantastic job reading his own work.

travisbaldree.com

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Review of Beauty, by Robin McKinley

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

coverBeauty

by Robin McKinley
read by Charlotte Parry

Recorded Books, 2013. (Print book originally published in 1978.) 7 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written July 29, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

As part of #Sonderbooks25, celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, I’ve been rereading books by one of my very favorite authors, Robin McKinley. When doing so, I was surprised to discover that I’d never written a review of several of her books – turns out I read them before I began writing Sonderbooks in 2001. Now, I do own copies of every one of them – but the easiest ones to fit into my queue were the ones my library has as eaudiobooks. I’m happy to say that, even after all these years, Beauty still has a holds list.

Beauty is a sweet retelling of the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast” – and is one of the books that made me realize I love fairy tale retellings. This was Robin McKinley’s debut book, and is a totally positive take on Beauty and her family. Even her sisters – who in the fairy tale are selfish and grasping and lazy – are wonderful and kind. After the family’s financial disaster, one sister’s fiance takes the family away to his home town by a magical forest – and they all build a good life together there. The other sister’s fiance was lost at sea along with their father’s ships, and the family has nothing but love for Beauty, the youngest.

This book was written long before it was acceptable to put sex into young adult novels, so the romance between Beauty and Beast is built on shared activities rather than blistering attraction – and indeed Beauty must overcome repulsion at the idea of him even touching her. This Beast is honorable and says he never would have killed her father – Beast would have sent him home if Beauty had refused to come – but he tells her that she would have been eaten up with guilt over sending him to what she thought was his death.

The book does not even broach the subject of Stockholm syndrome or how maybe Beast isn’t all that honorable if he’d deprive someone of their freedom. It doesn’t broach the vast disparity in their ages.

But what we’re left with is a sweet fairy tale with a heroine we can’t help but love. Yes, like the Disney version, Beauty loves to read. She also has a magnificent horse that only she can handle. And she’s someone who makes the best of things.

Read this book for a feel-good Happily-Ever-After tale. And it’s a great introduction to the grand mistress of fantasy’s work.

Note: It doesn’t look like the audiobook is currently available, but do check your local library.

robinmckinley.com

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Review of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, by Sangu Mandanna

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Paranormal, Romance, Starred Review 0

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

by Sangu Mandanna
read by Samara MacLaren

Penguin Audio, 2022. 9 hours, 59 minutes.
Review written June 12, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’m so glad that after I read A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, I looked for more books by the same author. This cozy paranormal romantasy is like a warm hug. Well, okay, it’s a somewhat sexy hug – but the main point of the book is feel-good warmth.

[As it happens, the love interest in both books was a handsome librarian. I can get behind that!]

As the book opens, Mika Moon is a witch who’s used to being isolated. The witches of Britain only get together every few months for a couple hours, and they change the location every time. Too much power in one place will attract attention, and that can lead to disaster.

But then she gets a job offer for a job she hadn’t been looking for. There’s a hidden house in the country inhabited by an older gay couple, a fifty-something lady caretaker, a handsome librarian – and three little girl witches. The adults are looking for a witch to teach the girls magic. They tend to have magical accidents and need to learn to control their power before a lawyer comes by the day after Christmas. The owner of the house is a witch herself who took these girls in, and she’s been in South America for quite some time. Or so Mika is told.

So there are all the ingredients of Mary Poppins or Maria von Trapp. Two of the girls are easily won over, as Mika shares her love of magic, but the other is more challenging.

And the romance part is difficult. All witches are under a curse, or at least a spell gone wrong, and become orphans soon after their birth. Mika had a witch as her guardian, but she was raised by nannies and tutors whose memories were wiped when they figured out what Mika was. So Mika has spent her life moving from one place to another, never getting close enough so that people will find out what she is and want to use their magic for themselves.

And if the head witch of the local society finds out that four witches are living under one roof, Mika knows they’ll be split up. So it’s better to try not to get too fond of this feeling of family and home.

The characters filling the house help make this book the delight it is. Each of the girls has a personality, and all the adults have built a loving family for them. Mika herself shines with her love of magic and a desire to do good things with it.

sangumandanna.com

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Review of Sabriel, by Garth Nix

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Sabriel

by Garth Nix
read by Tim Curry

Listening Library, 2002. 10 hours, 43 minutes.
Review written October 21, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
Original review posted January 20, 2004.
2004 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Fantasy for Young Adults

As part of #Sonderbooks25, celebrating 25 years of posting Sonderbooks, I’m rereading many of my Sonderbooks Stand-outs from previous years and writing new reviews for the ones written before my 2006 revision of the website. The project is taking me much, much longer than I thought it would, because I’m reading more of my old reviews than planned and rereading (or listening) to more of the books – but I’m having a whole lot of fun with it, so what’s not to like?

And I don’t think I remembered just how good Sabriel is. I wish I could define why it’s head and shoulders above your run-of-the-mill current romantasy – because then maybe I could write one myself. But I’ll try to put my finger on some of the things that make the book so excellent.

First, Garth Nix does an incredible job with world-building. The world and the magic system is unlike any other fantasy novel I’ve ever read, and is incredibly complex, but he expertly pulls you along without ever a boring exposition drop. Sabriel has been brought up in a school close to the border with the Old Kingdom – full of Charter Magic – but her father has been teaching her the skills of an Abhorsen – a necromancer on the side of good who can send dead things back into Death.

But one day Sabriel gets a messenger from Death bringing her father’s bells and sword. She’s told she is the new Abhorsen. So Sabriel goes on a quest into the Old Kingdom to try to find her father’s body and free him from whatever trapped him in Death. And it turns out along the way, she is trying to save the entire Old Kingdom from the Greater Dead creature that trapped him there.

We get information about what she needs to do and how to do it as she goes – but it’s not done in a haphazard way. Sabriel starts with basic knowledge of how to use the Abhorsen’s bells against dead things – which she has to use in her journey. She finds broken Charter stones and decimated villages in her travels, and there are many terrifying moments when she is chased by powerful dead beings.

Yes, there’s a little bit of romance. The romance is shown to the reader rather than told. Though honestly, they could have said a little more about it – but I happen to like understated romance more than overstated romance.

And the story pulls you in, from Sabriel’s first small venture into death to save a friend’s pet to her frantic stand against a creature of Destruction. This book was even better than I remembered.

garthnix.com

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Review of Sonnets and Serpents, by Elizabeth Lowham

Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

coverSonnets and Serpents

by Elizabeth Lowham

Shadow Mountain Publishing, 2025. 373 pages.
Review written May 20, 2026, from a library book.

Sonnets and Serpents is a sequel to Casters and Crowns. It involves different people in a different place, so you could get away with reading this one without reading the first. But I think you’ll understand the world and its magic better if you read them in order.

Eliza, the sister of Aria, the princess of Loegria who featured in the first novel, has taken a ship to Pravusat to follow Henry, the young man she loves, who’d said he’d court her, but then got exiled. Silas Bennett was also exiled – and was asked by Aria to find her sister, make sure she was safe, and send her home. Silas was happy to be in exile from Loegria, a place where his status as an Animal Affiliate – who can take the shape of a snake and communicate with other snakes – is not appreciated.

But when Eliza arrives in Pravusat, they tell her that Henry’s ship sank, and there were no survivors. She refuses to believe it, and determines to continue to search for him. Since she can’t understand the language, she buys a charm from a Stone Caster to understand it better. But she asked for the charm in a language she didn’t understand – and it turns out that when she snaps one bracelet on herself and the other on Silas’s wrist, they are stuck. Yes, she can now understand the local language as well as Silas can. But they are not able to go far apart from each other. They can be in the next room, but the physical distance can’t be too great.

So they have to make a deal. On alternate days, Eliza searches for Henry and Silas attempts to do magical research to land a professorship at the university in Pravusat where he had previously been a student.

And it so happens, they uncover a plot and get into big trouble. And the banter between them as this happens is a whole lot of fun.

As the book started, I thought Eliza was a bit annoying. She was impulsive and silly and not very good at making plans. She’s in love with the idea of love and hardly even knows Henry, but now insists he’s alive despite evidence. But Eliza grew on me, and her character grew on the page.

There were things about the plot I didn’t like. It walked the line just barely on the side of believable. Little things like she evaded the secret police in the marketplace and they seemingly just stopped searching for her. Or that they’d decide it was a reasonable plan to go into a prison to search. Or even the coincidence about stumbling into a major plot in the first place.

But the slow-burn romance was so much fun to watch, I was less picky about details like that. This is a no sex, plenty of kissing kind of romance and the enemies-to-lovers plot did feel believable as proximity forces the two to get to know each other.

The government in Pravusat is left in not the greatest shape, making me wonder if there are more adventures to come. (No more princesses, though!)

elizabethlowham.com

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Review of The Last Best Quest Ever, by F. T. Lukens

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Last Best Quest Ever

by F. T. Lukens
read by Lindsey Dorcus

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2026. 11 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written June 5, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

F. T. Lukens’ stories are always full of magic and full of fun. This one features 17-year-old Ellinore, who is known in the kingdom as Ellinore the Brave, and has been winning the kingdom’s quest competitions since she was thirteen.

It all started when she was twelve and a reckless knight lured a giant magical bear into their village. After Ellinore picked up the knight’s fallen sword, the bear fell on her – and luckily for her, impaled itself on the sword. At her next quest, when she was thirteen, she was supposed to get rid of the golden dragon that was plaguing a village. Well, Ellinore befriended the dragon, whose name was Dave, and convinced him to hide out in a different place, only fly at night, and take out his penchant for practical jokes on Ellinore.

Dave gave her a golden scale to take back to the king, and since then, he helped her win further quests – finding ways to make deals and talk reasonably instead of hacking and killing.

But the pressure of the lying was wearing Ellinore down, so after she earned enough bags of gold to move her parents to a nice cottage by the sea, she decided she was going to retire from questing.

But then her twin brother Zig foolishly made a bargain with a couple of mages in a tavern. In exchange for a big bag of gold, Ellinore had to bring them the horn of the Elderbeast. The catch: If she doesn’t succeed in sixteen days, the mages will take her brother’s heart.

Zig can be annoying, but Ellinore will do anything to keep him alive. So she sets out on a quest to find the Elderbeast’s horn. She usually works alone, but this time, she ends up gaining some companions: her brother, who insists on coming along; Aven, the attractive second-best quester in the kingdom; a royal young lady who wants to learn from Ellinore the Brave; and a young bard who has a map that shows the whereabouts of the Elderbeast.

But there are multiple rivals and multiple obstacles, and as the clock is ticking (or rather the candle is burning), Zig gets weaker and weaker. But the trouble with going on a quest with other people is that she can’t let them find out she’s a fraud.

This book has all the fun things I’m used to from F. T. Lukens’ books – magic, adventure, friendship, romance, danger, a refreshingly queer-normative society, and characters I love spending time with. I think there’s still a couple of their books I’ve missed, so I will for sure be looking those up. Their books always leave me smiling.

ft-lukens.com

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Review of Spindle’s End, by Robin McKinley

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Spindle’s End

by Robin McKinley
read by Justine Eyre

Tantor Media, 2019. 12 hours, 30 minutes.
Review written May 31, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I was surprised to realize I never reviewed this Old Favorite on Sonderbooks. I was looking for Robin McKinley books the library has as eaudiobooks, thinking I’d be rereading books from the early years of writing Sonderbooks – and found Spindle’s End. It wasn’t until I looked for the old review on Sonderbooks that I discovered there wasn’t one. Amazon now tells me I purchased a hardcover copy of this book on May 5, 2000 – so I read it a year before I started writing Sonderbooks.

And I honestly hadn’t remembered how good it is! This time through was a delight. I loved the narrator – with a delightful English accent – much more than the narrator of my two favorite Robin McKinley books, The Blue Sword, and The Hero and the Crown. Am I so shallow that I require an English accent? I do think it seems appropriate for a fairy tale retelling. Anyway, I loved this narrator.

Spindle’s End is a very loose retelling of “Sleeping Beauty.” Very loose, with many significant details changed. I think the first time I read it, I couldn’t quite forgive those changes. This time, I knew they were coming, and I was simply caught up in the wonderful tale.

One significant change makes the story make a whole lot more sense – The evil fairy who curses the princess explicitly states that while she originally planned her curse for the princess’s 21st birthday, she could make it happen at any time. So this is why the princess must go into hiding.

I like the way the book begins by focusing in on 15-year-old Catriona, a young fairy learning from her aunt. She’s handed the baby princess and gets the responsibility of hiding her and bringing her home. Along the way, Catriona, who can talk to animals, gets help from animals who arrange to feed the baby.

And these are the sort of delightful details Robin McKinley has added to the fairy tale. The kingdom is packed full of magic, so much so that ordinary folks have ways of dealing with it to avoid the inconvenience of things transforming unexpectedly. First we focus on Catriona, bringing up baby Rosie as an ordinary village girl with the help of her aunt. Then as Rosie grows, the focus shifts to her, as her 21st birthday approaches and it appears that the evil fairy has finally found her.

The story is lovely, but you won’t find any princess passively waiting for a prince to save her. I like the way they subverted some of the fairy “gifts” bestowed at birth by, for example, not ever teaching Rosie to embroider, so her being supernaturally good at it wouldn’t be noticed. They didn’t have to worry about the magically perfect ringlets in her hair, because Rosie cut her hair short even as a small child.

So, yes, the frame of the fairy tale is there, but the delightful particularity comes entirely from Robin McKinley, who’s especially good at making characters who are far from perfect, but get you completely on their side. They work for their happily ever after, and you’ll be with them all the way.

robinmckinley.com

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Review of Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom, by Sangu Mandanna

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom

by Sangu Mandanna
read by Zenia Starr

Listening Library, 2021. 7 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written July 4, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

I checked out this audiobook because of how much I love the author’s cozy fantasy novels for adults. It turned out to be a sweet fantasy for kids, in the mythology-is-actually-real genre.

In this case, the mythology in question is Indian mythology, and there’s a twist. Kiki Kallira, a girl who’s recently started having symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (Though it’s not named as such, and she hasn’t gotten a diagnosis yet, because she hasn’t told her mother how bad it is yet.), has been obsessively drawing a world in her sketch book where a heroic girl, based on her disreputable great-aunt, battles a major Indian demon, aided by a band of resourceful orphans. One day, this girl shows up in her bedroom battling a lesser demon.

It turns out that the major demon is real, and had been exiled to The Nowhere Place. He schemed to get back to our world by using his magic to make Kiki’s sketchbook world real – and use that to get out of The Nowhere Place. Now he plans to go from Kiki’s world eventually back to our world.

Now, the girl hero has escaped through a small tear between worlds, and takes Kiki back with her. Kiki needs to defeat the demon in her pocket universe in order to keep him from finding his way to our world. But how can a small, weak little girl with a brain that won’t behave defeat a demon?

And once in her world, Kiki befriends the band of orphans, who were already dear to her. Now that they are real, can she really bear to do something that would make that world stop existing, even though it will defeat the evil demon?

So there are nice undercurrents here, and some twists and turns in the quest. The author continues to display her fantasy-writing chops.

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