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Princess of Roumania #4
The Hidden World
The Hidden World is the concluding volume in Paul Park’s remarkable tale of Roumania, a world that is both more real and yet also more mysterious and magical than our own.
After finding out that she is the lost princess of Roumania and the mythical White Tyger, Miranda’s fate is still uncertain. The ghosts of her enemies cluster about her, the insane spirit of the Baroness takes possession of her body for a time, and demons released by her mother are abroad. And through it all her heart calls out to Peter, away with the army, whom she has come to love, and her best friend Andromeda, sworn to help her and protect her. There are no easy answers; it all looks impossible. Any hope may lie in the hidden world of spirits, where death is but an inconvenience.
After finding out that she is the lost princess of Roumania and the mythical White Tyger, Miranda’s fate is still uncertain. The ghosts of her enemies cluster about her, the insane spirit of the Baroness takes possession of her body for a time, and demons released by her mother are abroad. And through it all her heart calls out to Peter, away with the army, whom she has come to love, and her best friend Andromeda, sworn to help her and protect her. There are no easy answers; it all looks impossible. Any hope may lie in the hidden world of spirits, where death is but an inconvenience.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 15, 2008
1 person is currently reading
100 people want to read
About the author
Paul Park
62 books45 followersPaul Park (born 1954) is an American science fiction author and fantasy author. He lives in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children. He also teaches a Reading and Writing Science Fiction course at Williams College. He has also taught several times at the Clarion West Writing Workshop.
Park appeared on the American science fiction scene in 1987 and quickly established himself as a writer of polished, if often grim, literary science fiction. His first work was the Starbridge Chronicles trilogy, set on a world with generations-long seasons much like Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy. His critically acclaimed novels have since dealt with colonialism on alien worlds (Coelestis), Biblical (Three Marys) and theosophical (The Gospel of Corax) legends, a parallel world where magic works (A Princess of Roumania and its sequels, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger and The Hidden World), and other topics. He has published short stories in Omni Magazine, Interzone and other magazines.
Park appeared on the American science fiction scene in 1987 and quickly established himself as a writer of polished, if often grim, literary science fiction. His first work was the Starbridge Chronicles trilogy, set on a world with generations-long seasons much like Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy. His critically acclaimed novels have since dealt with colonialism on alien worlds (Coelestis), Biblical (Three Marys) and theosophical (The Gospel of Corax) legends, a parallel world where magic works (A Princess of Roumania and its sequels, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger and The Hidden World), and other topics. He has published short stories in Omni Magazine, Interzone and other magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 31, 2014
Right, then, the final volume in Park's quartet about Greater Roumania. Park has been compared to a lot of other writers over the course of these four books, but one other springs to mind: Michael Swanwick, specifically his anti-pastoral fairy tale, The Iron Dragon's Daughter. These stories share a common approach to fantasy in which they refuse to deliver or indulge in the traditional consolations of the fantasy genre. So when Miranda turns out to be a Princess in a magical world where she wields a terrifying magical power and has friends and allies and dangerous enemies, none of these things count as a blessing. Her home is destroyed, revealed as a magical illusion then ripped away, taking her adoptive parents with her. Her royal blood marks her out not as a figure of real power and influence but at best a ragged guerilla figurehead, or a political chess-piece in a morally and politically complex world in the throes of burgeoning modernity where royalty is rapidly becoming an empty symbol of the past.
Her powers work best in the Hidden World where she is the White Tyger, but even this is mostly the power to kill and destroy dispassionately, and as she realises herself, killing a few bad people here and there solves very few of the larger problems her country is confronted with. Her friends are altered and changed in profound and subtle ways. Her allies are powerless, superstitious gypsies or secretive, untrustworthy, jealous old women with ambiguous agendas. Her enemies include everyone powerful enough to damage or destroy her country. There is no clear path or plan for her to follow, no easy way to make things better and save her home or her friends. She makes many mistakes at terrible costs. This is not the rousing tale of a plucky modern princess rallying the peasants of a Ruritanian backwoods against an evil pretender to the throne.
In The Hidden World her mistake is to have the tourmaline stolen by the ghost of the mad baroness, stranding Miranda in the hidden world and allowing the baroness to possess bodies, including hers, in the real world. Dreadful, increasingly mechanised trench warfare rages on the border against the Turks and the Russians and a madman and murderer rules in Budapest. Is there anything she can do to save herself, her friends and her country? Answers do not come easy, and the ending is sad, lonely and uncertain, but concludes the quartet in a deeply satisfying manner. The four books mark a brave, thoughtful, beautiful addition to the fantasy canon and I recommend them unreservedly.
Her powers work best in the Hidden World where she is the White Tyger, but even this is mostly the power to kill and destroy dispassionately, and as she realises herself, killing a few bad people here and there solves very few of the larger problems her country is confronted with. Her friends are altered and changed in profound and subtle ways. Her allies are powerless, superstitious gypsies or secretive, untrustworthy, jealous old women with ambiguous agendas. Her enemies include everyone powerful enough to damage or destroy her country. There is no clear path or plan for her to follow, no easy way to make things better and save her home or her friends. She makes many mistakes at terrible costs. This is not the rousing tale of a plucky modern princess rallying the peasants of a Ruritanian backwoods against an evil pretender to the throne.
In The Hidden World her mistake is to have the tourmaline stolen by the ghost of the mad baroness, stranding Miranda in the hidden world and allowing the baroness to possess bodies, including hers, in the real world. Dreadful, increasingly mechanised trench warfare rages on the border against the Turks and the Russians and a madman and murderer rules in Budapest. Is there anything she can do to save herself, her friends and her country? Answers do not come easy, and the ending is sad, lonely and uncertain, but concludes the quartet in a deeply satisfying manner. The four books mark a brave, thoughtful, beautiful addition to the fantasy canon and I recommend them unreservedly.
March 23, 2019
Okay, either I'm getting used to this style just in time for the series to end or it really did take him four books to find his groove because this is the first book to grab me and give me some inkling of what the series' potential could have been.
Of course it could be that the cover art looks like someone's tribute to what they were told a Walton Ford painting looked like, which I'm kind of okay with. It’s the little things, sometimes.
I've said numerous times throughout the series that it never felt like it was conceived as a story with four separate acts so much as one long one that either the publisher or author chopped into four parts for deadline or sales reasons and if anything these last two books only give credence to that theory. I can't name two many important things that happened in the first two books other than Miranda and her friends arriving in magical Roumania. Sure, there's been a lot of feinting, with the Baroness wandering about playing footsie with the politics, Miranda's friends/bodyguards trying to adjust themselves to their new combination of past and present lives and Miranda herself wandering around a bit vaguely waiting for something to happen.
Then, just like that, it starts.
The third book started to point us in that direction, mostly because of Andromeda/Sasha Prochenko taking the reins and forcing the plot to actually do something. Miranda got captured, then escaped, the Baroness shot her own kid by accident, demons were unleashed on the world, the politics on the ground shifted slightly . . . and Prochenko killed the Baroness.
Its handled discreetly at the end of the third book but the act is much clearer as the last book starts, as everyone reacts to her demise and our heroic trio gets scattered. Peter Gross gets sent off to war, Prochenko is about being generally resourceful and Miranda is sort of getting a handle on things, all the while laying low while the political situation deteriorates massively. While the early books could be accused of a certain murkiness when it came to the machinations of the plot, the characters here have been replaced by people with more coherent motivations an thus it becomes much easier to figure out what's going on and what everyone's goals are. Yes, some of them have been pared down to that easily digestible notion of survival but even the political stuff becomes easier to manage, turning the book into a sparring dance between what a country envisions itself to be and what pragmatism says it should be.
It helps that the magical stuff starts to make more sense. Miranda spends time simultaneously in the real world and the "hidden world" which sounds like a trendy New Age speakeasy staffed by mixologists who don't make you drinks as much as help you conceive the taste of the drink in your mind (and then still want a tip) but it gives Parks a chance to tap into the mythological vein the series was always wanting to delve into. In a world where the dead aren't dead just more annoyed versions of themselves Miranda encounters the past trying to kill her as much as people with bullets are trying to kill her. And despite being dead the dear Baroness isn't out of the picture yet.
All this leads to a book that feels like actual stakes are in play for once as opposed to everyone meandering about until something blows up or the book ends. With Prochenko stealing the show as always (and while conversations between Peter and Miranda feel pulled straight of YA territory, there's a pull and ache to her talks with Prochenko, who still comes across as Andromeda) matters escalate until it feels there might be actual consequences to all of this. When Miranda is essentially hijacked it feels like a glove being thrown down and everyone reacts to it like an activated grenade, unsure of what to do but everyone eying each other in the hopes that someone decides to throw themselves on it first.
It works, mostly and up to a point. A masquerade ball where all the players and political/magical/spiritual conflicts collide feels like something the book was leading up to all along and its denouement is in its own way heartbreaking. Unfortunately for the book it ends far too early and leaves us with another part that feels like an elongated epilogue as Miranda and her remaining friend attempt to tie up some loose ends that feel exactly like the author trying to tie up loose ends. It goes on for too long, serving to dissipate the drama that had come before it and still somehow feels perfunctory. Its only in the closing sequences that the book finally seems to grasp its own tragedy, the sorrow of growing up without getting a chance to grow up, the choices between where you are and where you were and the pains of staying in either place, and how knowing anything never seems to explain anything, at best only hints at what questions to ask next.
His prose is marvelous there and lyrical throughout the entire novel, finally dispensing with concrete descriptions of anything and full-on embracing writing by feel, so that the texture of it all becomes much more immersive . . . you may not "get" Roumania as much as Parks wants you to but maybe you begin to get a sense of why he wanted to write about it.
Does it work though, as a series? I don't know. Its definitely a mixed bag, taking over two and a half books before it even started to "click" for me and while I starting to become attuned by the allure toward the end it felt too little too late. Miranda never really coheres as a protagonist to root for. Of her friends Peter doesn't do much better than she did, seemingly muffled under layers of gauze, while Prochenko becomes the real find, a man in a girl's body, two people at once seemingly integrated and confident in their own abilities. Parks combination of alternate history, magic and political dealing never quite merges into the potent brew he wants it to be . . . even the hidden world concept becomes confusing at times, like two different books overlaid on top of each other. Each section when isolated has its own baroque and interesting moments but it feels like how he envisioned the series, a girl coming of age in a world not quite our own and establishing her own place in its myths and folklore just never comes to pass. The characters deaden the world and the world deadened the characters but the help each needed to stand on its own never came to pass. It had its moments but ultimately it becomes like the legendary beast Miranda is supposed to embody, seen through a distant haze and just sharp enough to get a glimpse of the majesty its been suggested it has. But then just before you can blink and bring it into real focus, it turns to stare back at you with a gaze with could be rife with meaning, or mean nothing at all before slinking away into the forest as less than a shadow, gone and leaving behind only a rapidly fading memory of perhaps what you thought once saw, without even the weight of tracks to remind you.
Of course it could be that the cover art looks like someone's tribute to what they were told a Walton Ford painting looked like, which I'm kind of okay with. It’s the little things, sometimes.
I've said numerous times throughout the series that it never felt like it was conceived as a story with four separate acts so much as one long one that either the publisher or author chopped into four parts for deadline or sales reasons and if anything these last two books only give credence to that theory. I can't name two many important things that happened in the first two books other than Miranda and her friends arriving in magical Roumania. Sure, there's been a lot of feinting, with the Baroness wandering about playing footsie with the politics, Miranda's friends/bodyguards trying to adjust themselves to their new combination of past and present lives and Miranda herself wandering around a bit vaguely waiting for something to happen.
Then, just like that, it starts.
The third book started to point us in that direction, mostly because of Andromeda/Sasha Prochenko taking the reins and forcing the plot to actually do something. Miranda got captured, then escaped, the Baroness shot her own kid by accident, demons were unleashed on the world, the politics on the ground shifted slightly . . . and Prochenko killed the Baroness.
Its handled discreetly at the end of the third book but the act is much clearer as the last book starts, as everyone reacts to her demise and our heroic trio gets scattered. Peter Gross gets sent off to war, Prochenko is about being generally resourceful and Miranda is sort of getting a handle on things, all the while laying low while the political situation deteriorates massively. While the early books could be accused of a certain murkiness when it came to the machinations of the plot, the characters here have been replaced by people with more coherent motivations an thus it becomes much easier to figure out what's going on and what everyone's goals are. Yes, some of them have been pared down to that easily digestible notion of survival but even the political stuff becomes easier to manage, turning the book into a sparring dance between what a country envisions itself to be and what pragmatism says it should be.
It helps that the magical stuff starts to make more sense. Miranda spends time simultaneously in the real world and the "hidden world" which sounds like a trendy New Age speakeasy staffed by mixologists who don't make you drinks as much as help you conceive the taste of the drink in your mind (and then still want a tip) but it gives Parks a chance to tap into the mythological vein the series was always wanting to delve into. In a world where the dead aren't dead just more annoyed versions of themselves Miranda encounters the past trying to kill her as much as people with bullets are trying to kill her. And despite being dead the dear Baroness isn't out of the picture yet.
All this leads to a book that feels like actual stakes are in play for once as opposed to everyone meandering about until something blows up or the book ends. With Prochenko stealing the show as always (and while conversations between Peter and Miranda feel pulled straight of YA territory, there's a pull and ache to her talks with Prochenko, who still comes across as Andromeda) matters escalate until it feels there might be actual consequences to all of this. When Miranda is essentially hijacked it feels like a glove being thrown down and everyone reacts to it like an activated grenade, unsure of what to do but everyone eying each other in the hopes that someone decides to throw themselves on it first.
It works, mostly and up to a point. A masquerade ball where all the players and political/magical/spiritual conflicts collide feels like something the book was leading up to all along and its denouement is in its own way heartbreaking. Unfortunately for the book it ends far too early and leaves us with another part that feels like an elongated epilogue as Miranda and her remaining friend attempt to tie up some loose ends that feel exactly like the author trying to tie up loose ends. It goes on for too long, serving to dissipate the drama that had come before it and still somehow feels perfunctory. Its only in the closing sequences that the book finally seems to grasp its own tragedy, the sorrow of growing up without getting a chance to grow up, the choices between where you are and where you were and the pains of staying in either place, and how knowing anything never seems to explain anything, at best only hints at what questions to ask next.
His prose is marvelous there and lyrical throughout the entire novel, finally dispensing with concrete descriptions of anything and full-on embracing writing by feel, so that the texture of it all becomes much more immersive . . . you may not "get" Roumania as much as Parks wants you to but maybe you begin to get a sense of why he wanted to write about it.
Does it work though, as a series? I don't know. Its definitely a mixed bag, taking over two and a half books before it even started to "click" for me and while I starting to become attuned by the allure toward the end it felt too little too late. Miranda never really coheres as a protagonist to root for. Of her friends Peter doesn't do much better than she did, seemingly muffled under layers of gauze, while Prochenko becomes the real find, a man in a girl's body, two people at once seemingly integrated and confident in their own abilities. Parks combination of alternate history, magic and political dealing never quite merges into the potent brew he wants it to be . . . even the hidden world concept becomes confusing at times, like two different books overlaid on top of each other. Each section when isolated has its own baroque and interesting moments but it feels like how he envisioned the series, a girl coming of age in a world not quite our own and establishing her own place in its myths and folklore just never comes to pass. The characters deaden the world and the world deadened the characters but the help each needed to stand on its own never came to pass. It had its moments but ultimately it becomes like the legendary beast Miranda is supposed to embody, seen through a distant haze and just sharp enough to get a glimpse of the majesty its been suggested it has. But then just before you can blink and bring it into real focus, it turns to stare back at you with a gaze with could be rife with meaning, or mean nothing at all before slinking away into the forest as less than a shadow, gone and leaving behind only a rapidly fading memory of perhaps what you thought once saw, without even the weight of tracks to remind you.
July 25, 2018
It is my own fault that I saw a woman sleeping beside a white tiger, and then glanced at the back cover to discover that "the lost princess of Roumania" was also "the mythical whyte tiger". Then add in ghosts of her enemies, demons released by her mother, and the insane spirit of the baroness that possesses her from time to time. And a hidden world where death is only an inconvenience.
How could I *not* love this book? (These are not spoilers. They're on the back cover, after all)
Well, the answer to that is that I didn't realize this was the last book of a 4 part series... so, although I tried to read it--and I do give the author kudos for trying to "fill in" the missing parts from the previous books--it just wasn't enough.
I read the first 60-70 pages, trying to make sense of things, but when it jumps POV from character to character, and time period to time period (and some of the characters are sometimes male and sometimes female and part human/part animal), I realized I couldn't truly get any further without reading the other books.
Will I read them? I'm not yet sure, but I did put them on my "to read" list and am glad that this book only cost me a quarter at a garage sale to purchase. From what little I read, the writing was good, it was just the story seemed convoluted since it is difficult to "wrap up" the previous 3 books without making the 4th too horribly long.
How could I *not* love this book? (These are not spoilers. They're on the back cover, after all)
Well, the answer to that is that I didn't realize this was the last book of a 4 part series... so, although I tried to read it--and I do give the author kudos for trying to "fill in" the missing parts from the previous books--it just wasn't enough.
I read the first 60-70 pages, trying to make sense of things, but when it jumps POV from character to character, and time period to time period (and some of the characters are sometimes male and sometimes female and part human/part animal), I realized I couldn't truly get any further without reading the other books.
Will I read them? I'm not yet sure, but I did put them on my "to read" list and am glad that this book only cost me a quarter at a garage sale to purchase. From what little I read, the writing was good, it was just the story seemed convoluted since it is difficult to "wrap up" the previous 3 books without making the 4th too horribly long.
April 13, 2010
(review is for the whole series)
This series is about teen-aged Miranda and her two friends, Peter and Andromeda, who are pulled into the world of Roumania, an alternate Europe with a very different history where Roumania is a world power, a kind of magic exists, and the world is still at a WWI level of technology. In this world, Miranda is the child of important political figures and somewhat of a prophesied chosen one. This makes her sought after by a variety of people for purposes both good and bad. Chief among the bad is Nicola Ceausescu, a former opera star who is now involved in both magical and political machinations in hopes of getting power into her own hands. Miranda, Peter, and Andromeda must navigate this confusing new landscape to both stay alive and unshackled and to figure out what to do. It was a fascinating series, but overall, my feelings about it were mixed.
First, the bad. It took until the second half of the third book for Miranda to figure out enough about herself, what was going on, and what she wanted to do with her situation to get some sort of direction and goals. Before that, she is oddly passive, mostly reacting to events rather than trying to accomplish anything. Miranda is also not a terribly interesting character. For most of the series, she functions more as a central axis for the other, much more fascinating characters to act and interact around. Also, the goals of many of the other characters were all too often murky as well. Although I recognize that this was the result of an admirable and mostly successful to accurately and grittily portray a country in the midst of massive political upheavals, it would have been nice to have a little more clarity here and there.
The goods were pretty good, though. I really like the way the series stands the young girl finds out she is really a princess in another, more fantastical land trope. Miranda may indeed be a princess of Roumania, but it is anything but a glamorous situation for her to be in. There's confusion and danger rather than excitement and heroic adventure. And although Miranda was not so compelling, the other characters were incredibly fascinating. Chief among them was Nicola Ceausescu, who turns out to be incredibly complex. Although I certainly wasn't rooting for her, these books practically sparkled whenever she was onstage in all her self-deceiving, scheming, fascinating glory. She really drives a lot of the story. Peter and Andromeda also turn out to be much more than they appear, which leads to some great character development for each of them.
This series is about teen-aged Miranda and her two friends, Peter and Andromeda, who are pulled into the world of Roumania, an alternate Europe with a very different history where Roumania is a world power, a kind of magic exists, and the world is still at a WWI level of technology. In this world, Miranda is the child of important political figures and somewhat of a prophesied chosen one. This makes her sought after by a variety of people for purposes both good and bad. Chief among the bad is Nicola Ceausescu, a former opera star who is now involved in both magical and political machinations in hopes of getting power into her own hands. Miranda, Peter, and Andromeda must navigate this confusing new landscape to both stay alive and unshackled and to figure out what to do. It was a fascinating series, but overall, my feelings about it were mixed.
First, the bad. It took until the second half of the third book for Miranda to figure out enough about herself, what was going on, and what she wanted to do with her situation to get some sort of direction and goals. Before that, she is oddly passive, mostly reacting to events rather than trying to accomplish anything. Miranda is also not a terribly interesting character. For most of the series, she functions more as a central axis for the other, much more fascinating characters to act and interact around. Also, the goals of many of the other characters were all too often murky as well. Although I recognize that this was the result of an admirable and mostly successful to accurately and grittily portray a country in the midst of massive political upheavals, it would have been nice to have a little more clarity here and there.
The goods were pretty good, though. I really like the way the series stands the young girl finds out she is really a princess in another, more fantastical land trope. Miranda may indeed be a princess of Roumania, but it is anything but a glamorous situation for her to be in. There's confusion and danger rather than excitement and heroic adventure. And although Miranda was not so compelling, the other characters were incredibly fascinating. Chief among them was Nicola Ceausescu, who turns out to be incredibly complex. Although I certainly wasn't rooting for her, these books practically sparkled whenever she was onstage in all her self-deceiving, scheming, fascinating glory. She really drives a lot of the story. Peter and Andromeda also turn out to be much more than they appear, which leads to some great character development for each of them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 3, 2008
This conclusion to Park's Roumania series, I think, finally brought me to terms with the previous books in the series. The other three books are decidedly odd, and I could never decide if I really liked them or not - odd again, for me, because I'm usually very clear-cut in what I do and don't like. In the conclusion, Park finally allowed me to figure out what exactly was going on in these books, and I enjoyed the layers of reality that he explores. I now want to go back and re-read the other three, because I feel like I read them all too far apart from each other, and it's also likely that Park has finally fallen into the groove of clear storytelling at the end.
This particular volume aside, It's hard to resolve my feelings about this series. On the one hand, it's got some great characters, fantastic prose, and a decidedly imaginative bent. On the other, the plot oscillates between kind of comprehensible to What The Hell Just Happened. I definitely didn't hate it, and obviously liked it enough to read all four volumes. I think this series is an acquired taste, which I was able to pick up on an appreciate enough to finish it. But hoo boy is it weird to have no clear-cut feelings about a set of books I've invested a good amount of time in.
This particular volume aside, It's hard to resolve my feelings about this series. On the one hand, it's got some great characters, fantastic prose, and a decidedly imaginative bent. On the other, the plot oscillates between kind of comprehensible to What The Hell Just Happened. I definitely didn't hate it, and obviously liked it enough to read all four volumes. I think this series is an acquired taste, which I was able to pick up on an appreciate enough to finish it. But hoo boy is it weird to have no clear-cut feelings about a set of books I've invested a good amount of time in.
May 26, 2009
This is the fourth and final book in Park's Roumanian series, easily the oddest series I've read to date. (Could be the oddest story as well but then I recalled Santa Steps Out by Robert Devereaux and for sheer oddness, that one's tough to beat.) There are three main characters in the Roumanian series: Miranda, Andromeda, and Peter. And their trajectory through these books is hard to summarize. Let's just say that the tale involves: an alternate world; conjurers; magical items (including a gun housing six demons, some of which get loose); possesion; a character that changes from female to dog to male to various combinations of the aforementioned; the titular spirit world; and a war between Roumania and Turkey. That said, I enjoyed the journey although at times I found it confusing. I'd recommend it to anyone bored with the same old thing. Also, lots of writerly types give this series high praise including Ursula K. LeGuin and Gene Wolfe.
January 18, 2009
Paul Park is the close friend of a close friend, and I had heard such high praise for "A Princess of Roumania," and the subsequent books, that I dutifully read this series. But the story just doesn't carry through four books. By the middle of the third, "The White Tyger," I had found the series tedious and was ready to abandon it entirely -- but I persevered.
"The Hidden World" delivers a satisfying conclusion and succinctly wraps up the hanging plotlines. If you're a devoted reader who feels obligated to see stories through, then by all means, jump in. It's a fine read, but I'm glad to see the end of this series.
"The Hidden World" delivers a satisfying conclusion and succinctly wraps up the hanging plotlines. If you're a devoted reader who feels obligated to see stories through, then by all means, jump in. It's a fine read, but I'm glad to see the end of this series.
March 24, 2010
It seemed to take me forever to finish this book/series, but I'm glad I did. I loved the baroness's character, and I loved Andromeda's character. I really do wish there had been more of them in the series.
I think the world that this author created was unique and enjoyable. I do wish that Miranda and Peter hadn't been so incredibly boring. Also, the pacing seemed off to me.
Though I enjoyed this book, I can't think of anyone I would recommend it to. I just don't think most people (or at least the people I know!) can get into a series like this.
I think the world that this author created was unique and enjoyable. I do wish that Miranda and Peter hadn't been so incredibly boring. Also, the pacing seemed off to me.
Though I enjoyed this book, I can't think of anyone I would recommend it to. I just don't think most people (or at least the people I know!) can get into a series like this.
August 5, 2014
Paul Park is a difficult author to read, but is someone that every aspiring author should read. His characters always be themselves, regardless of what you think, or may stereotypically expect. That's a difficult task, of not letting your characters become more likeable. People do not always change as magically as some authors allow their characters to. I will read this series again someday. Great Roumania is an interesting place.
June 11, 2008
I'm glad it's over. There's nothing worse than being embroiled in a multi-volume alternate universe saga while it's still coming out. I loved these books, but the jury's out on whether they merit a rereading. They push some of the same magic realist buttons that Mark Helprin does, only Park is out of the closet about being a fantasy novelist. Crap covers, though.
August 2, 2008
After reading the first three (which really weren't that great), I couldn't even make myself finish this one.
February 27, 2009
I'll come back and write more about this later but for now I will say that this is a very satisfying ending to the series - an ending that makes the work of reading the books totally worth it.
May 2, 2010
A real let down, given the preceding volumes in the series.
August 7, 2011
The final and (by far) weakest of the Paul Park "Princess" series.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews