{"id":593,"date":"2009-06-25T15:30:44","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T19:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=593"},"modified":"2010-02-09T20:53:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T00:53:00","slug":"review-of-princess-of-the-midnight-ball-by-jessica-day-george","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=593","title":{"rendered":"Review of Princess of the Midnight Ball, by Jessica Day George"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/midnight_ball.jpg\" alt=\"midnight_ball\" title=\"midnight_ball\" width=\"159\" height=\"240\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-594\" \/><em>Princess of the Midnight Ball<\/em><\/p>\n<p>by Jessica Day George<\/p>\n<p>Bloomsbury, New York, 2009.  280 pages.<br \/>\nStarred review<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Standouts2010.html\">Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010<\/a>: #9 Fantasy Teen Fiction<\/p>\n<p>I do love fairy tale retellings.  <em>Princess of the Midnight Ball<\/em> is a retelling of &#8220;Twelve Dancing Princesses,&#8221; beautifully carried out.<\/p>\n<p>This fairytale is one that features a hard-working common soldier, and I liked that aspect of the book.  The book opens with Galen returning from the war.  His father was a soldier before him, and his parents both died in the war.  You can&#8217;t help but like Galen, and it&#8217;s nice to see someone deserving work hard to save the day and win a princess.<\/p>\n<p>The reason the princesses dance every night is more sinister than meets the eye in the fairy tale.  Their mother made an ill-advised bargain with the King Under Stone.  And now her twelve daughters are paying the price, unable to tell anyone about their suffering.<\/p>\n<p>And Galen is a knitter!  He learned to knit his own socks and scarves during the war, and it comes in handy for binding evil.  Two knitting patterns are included at the back of the book.  I thoroughly enjoyed that bit of the story.<\/p>\n<p>Jessica Day George also does a good job giving the princesses distinct characters &#8212; not easy to do when you&#8217;re dealing with a family of twelve!  She gives Galen some additional obstacles to overcome with the result a thoroughly satisfying tale.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1599903229\/sonderbooksco-20\" target=\"outside\">Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Find this review on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\">Sonderbooks<\/a> at: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/midnight_ball.html\">www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/midnight_ball.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George Bloomsbury, New York, 2009. 280 pages. Starred review Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #9 Fantasy Teen Fiction I do love fairy tale retellings. Princess of the Midnight Ball is a retelling of &#8220;Twelve Dancing Princesses,&#8221; beautifully carried out. This fairytale is one that features a hard-working common soldier, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,9,24,31,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fairy-tale-variant","category-fantasy","category-romance","category-stand-outs","category-starred-review","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}