Customer Reviews

The Princetta

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A pity really. It was a really nice story to begin with; a runaway princess (princetta), a pirates son out to rescue her, ships, monsters and magic. What more could anyone want in a story?

A decent ending maybe? Not going to find one here. Okay, so it's a "bad" ending. Bondoux is obviously one of those authors that think needlessly killing off a few protagonists is the height of literary excellence. I admit I don't like those kinds of endings, ruins the whole story for me, but it might be a little more palatable if it weren't done in such an off-handed and abrupt manner.

Anyway it did spoil the story for me and I went away from it with a bad taste in my mouth.

NOT RECOMMENDED.

I'll admit, what first caught my attention about this book was the cover (I bought the newer version of this book). However, what really convinced me to actually buy this book was the brief summary on the back and the letter in the prologue. I thought this books was going to be about a strong, independent heroine who would do anything to preserve her freedom. Perhaps I did think that this book was going to be a bit cliche and somewhat like a romance novel for young adults, but that was still okay with me. I'm generally easily satisfied as long as the main characters have true strength. However, all my preconceptions about this book were very, very wrong.

The book started off well, with much potential to go in several directions. The main one I was thinking (especially from the description on the back) was that the heroine, Malva, the princetta, would stow away on some ship, be discovered by the captain, and they would fall in love and blah, blah, blah. Pretty cliche, but I like cliche, as long as it's well written cliche. This story did none of that, which I was pleasantly surprised by, but not for long.

I'm not really going to go into a step-by-step detailed outline of the plot or how this story progressed, by what I am going to do is discuss what I thought were some major flaws in the book. Poor editing (and uncreative place names) aside, Malva is one of the main reasons why this book was so hard to enjoy. As I was reading the novel I had a really hard time relating to her or even liking her very much. For someone who worked up the nerve to run away from home, and abandon her position more or less in the lap of luxury, Malva was an incredibly weak character.

For all her claims of wanting to be independent, at every turn Malva could do nothing by herself. First she has to depend on her maidservant to give her strength and take care of her. Next, when Malva and her servant are separated, and Malva is captured and sold off to be a part of a harem, she becomes sniveling and weak. She becomes dependent on another girl in the harem named Lei. Without Lei, Malva would have been fish food long ago. I find it ironic that there are strong female characters in this book (although they still don't have much personalities, but at least they take action), the leading lady is not one of them. She constantly has to be rescued by someone else, be it man or woman. Her final rescuer is the male lead, Orpheus, who she almost instantly becomes dependent on. This brings me to another flaw in the tale.

The love between Malva and Orpheus seems to spring up from out of nowhere. They all of a sudden become very important to each other, even though they just barely met. What's more is that once Malva starts liking Orpheus she starts becoming (pardon my language) a b*tch to Lei (who was rescued along with Mava from the harem) at times.

Another thing I want to mention is that once Malva is rescued from the harem the book just kind of seems to fall apart. Not many things make sense. They have to face obstacles and ordeals that aren't really quite clear in their prupose. Also, there seems to be pointless deaths along the way. And just when you think things are going to have a happy ending. Bam! You're sideswiped with ANOTHER pointless death that occurs in the most ridiculous of ways in my opinion. I'm not even going to go into what I think about the villain in this book, and personally, I thought the ending of the novel was horrible.

I could have forgiven the confusing episodic ordeals the characters had to go through. I could have forgiven the inexplicable romance between Malva and Orpheus. I could have even forgiven Malva's lack of likeability, weaknesses, and her utter dependence on others (it's not until the very end that she shows any ability to act on her own at all, which occurred far too late to make her likeable) if the ending had just been good. I can forgive a lot when there's a cheesey happy ending. There wasn't one in this book. The ending was depressing, unnecessarily so.

If you like weak heroines, confusing episodic tales, romance with no foundation, and lack of imagination and creativity, then this is the book for you. If you like strong female characters with and powerful and imaginative plot, then I'd suggest you skip this book. It's a shame this book ended up the way it did when it started out with so much potential.

All I am going to say is that her love interest dies because he happened to sneeze while shooting the bad guy. Yes, a sneeze!!! How lame is that?!! They defy death, prevail against all odds, and when they are finally safe back at home, he sneezed. The end.

When I started this book, I was prepared for yet another princess-flees-duty-to-pursue-adventure tale. It's only fair to mention that this sort of story drives me up the wall. I can't help feeling that nobody immature enough to put their own selfish desires before the well-being of an entire nation deserves to have a book written about them. However, the cover was too beautiful to ignore, and I had a long car trip ahead of me, so I figured, what the heck.

Rarely have I been so wonderfully surprised.

In my opinion, this story has a few main strengths that I would love to outline for anyone who is discouraged by the many negative reviews:

1) The writing itself. I've seen several reviewers complaining about the translation; maybe it really does annoy some people. For me, it created a unique and rather unearthly tone that I adored.

2) The journey. Again, this is something many reviewers have viewed unfavorably, complaining of characters disappearing from the story. But in a real journey, what happens? People follow the same road for a while, but sometimes their goals differ, and they part ways. The companions you end up with are not the ones you began with. In my opinion, it only added to the realism of the book.

3) The characters' moral development. I'll try not to give too much away, but let me say that Princetta Malva's immature placement of her own adventure and excitement above her duty to others doesn't last. She learns and grows, like the best characters from the best books.

So don't let the length or the naysayers dissuade you from enjoying this magnificent, unique, and ultimately magical journey.

I also, as I'm assuming countless others did the same, picked The Princetta up solely because of the cover. Seriously, the book's marketing department deserves major kudos. I remember browsing through the YA section of my local B&N and thinking what last book to pick up (since I already had three must-haves). It was between this and another book (whose name currently evades me), but for some reason (mainly the cover), my eyes kept glancing at The Princetta. So, I decided to buy this one. Of course when I got home, I searched for the reviews on Amazon and thought I had made a terrible mistake when I saw that it was given an average rating of two and a half stars. All these reviews kept saying how terrible the book was particularly the ending. So, I was imagining that this book was going to be horrific, so I put off reading it for a while. Well, I finally picked it up and since my expectations were so incredibly low, I actually ended up really enjoying it.

I didn't think I was going to like the whole voyage storyline (yes I read the synopsis before I bought it and knew that a voyage was essential to the plot, but again I say, hello, look at the cover! Never underestimate the power of a beautiful cover...) because everytime I read a book about a sea voyage, I tend to get mildly seasick. (I'm well aware that this is weird and all in my head, but really I can't help it.) But I got sucked into the voyage like you wouldn't believe. I found myself looking forward to what island they would go to next and what terrible monsters they were going to face. I felt like a kid again who was always looking at those fantasy island maps and thinking, "I'd love to go there and fight monsters with my sword". Heh, even then there were no dreams of being a princess for me. I wanted to be right in the action.

Now the characters. I really loved Malva at the beginning. She was assertive, sure of what she wanted, and she didn't seem like the typical, whiny, pathetic, YA heroine that's sort of the norm in supernatural/Fantasy YA novels. However, after a while, she started getting all my nerves with her spoiled behavior. Seriously, you're saying that you don't want to be a princess anymore, yet you get annoyed when you're not getting the perks of the princess you so desparately don't want to be... Can you sense my confusion? But luckily, there were a slew of supporting characters that made up for the annoying princess. I loved them all. The smart, medicinal-knowledged side-kick, the mischievious yet loyal dog, the giant with the huge heart to match, the lovable twins, all great. I was a bit "meh" on Malva's romantic interest. I just didn't click with him and as a result, didn't click with their romance. But the good thing was that the romance didn't really make me roll my eyes the way others do. I guess because the big focal point of the book was the voyage itself and the romance was a subplot. Big plus for me!

I mentioned before that I thought the book was going to be terrible due to other readers' reviews about the ending. I'm not going to say what the ending is as to not spoil anyone. But I do have to say that I don't understand what's so terrible about it. Call me cynical or whatever, but if you're reading a book where a slew of characters go on a dangerous voyage, I kind of think that it's a bit obvious that not all of them are going to make it. Maybe Harry Potter 7 ruined these types of things for me (seriously, that book was bloodbath) so that I'm not shocked anymore when something like that happens. The only time I get annoyed at endings is when they come completely out of left field and you start thinking "How in the world could that possibly happen?!" But for adventure books like this one, I think that the notion that not everyone is going to make it is always a possible outcome. Plus, I don't really need the sweet, sappy, ending.

So, I have to say that I really liked The Princetta. Sure, the heroine was kind of annoying, but the awesome adventure that had me turning the pages more than made up for it. It's not my favorite YA book by any means, but I don't think it's quite deserving of the two and a half star rating it has on Amazon. If a book manages to entertain me and not throw something completely out of left field in order to "shock" the audience, then I'm happy. Maybe I'm just easy... (Not in every sense of the word, thank you very much!)

I haven't finished this book yet, but one thing that has struck me several times so far is the lack of creativity in names, specifically place names. Here are a few examples "Aremica," (America) "The Orniant," (The Orient), "Sperta" (Sparta), the "Maltic Sea" (Baltic Sea). There is a creature called an "allicaitor" from "Aremica." In my opinion, the author should have just used the actual names if she was only going to change or replace a letter here or there. Like I said, though, I haven't finished the whole story so I can't comment on the rest.

Any high hopes I had for this book were crushed by the end of the first chapter. For an adventure story, it is remarkably boring. The characters were badly developed and do not evoke any fondness for themselves. Through the long telling of one completely avoidable adventure after another I found myself yawning and counting the pages, impatient to have done with it.
When at long dreary last I reached the final pages, the author dealt a final blow: a bad ending. It seemed that the author tried to make the story 'realistic' by giving it a tragic ending.
To be fair, the book may come across as boring because of a poor translation. Poor translation or no, this book is not worth your time or money.

The story of the Princetta starts out fairly strong with a young girl heading off to set her own destiny and a young man trying to forget his past. But that's where the story begins it's long and painfully slow decline into a rocky abyss of confusion and nothingness. Plot points that could have turned into something good fell flat or were never followed up. I felt as if the author hadn't quite mapped out where she wanted this story to go and just decided to wing it. By the end of the story there were, I thought, too many characters for this already completely overwhelmed story to handle; the author must have thought so too for she began picking them off one by one in scenes that were too obscure to comprehend. The end of the story (yes, despite all of this I read to the last page, clinging to some wild fantasy that this book would redeem itself somehow) left me feeling so jipped that I could hardly wait to return it to the library. Honestly not worth the ink it was printed with.

When I picked up this book, I thought it would be awesome. The prologue part where she writes a letter to her father was good and after the first twenty or so pages, I was hooked. So I bought it.

Words cannot describe how much I regret wasting ten bucks on this book. It may just be because it was translated from its native language, but I'm sure the translator couldn't have made it that bad. The story was interesting, I'll give it that, but it felt like there was almost no plot. The pacing was much too quick and, like another reviewer said, it seemed like the author tried to cram so many stories into just one book. The 'harem' that the author created was a very interesting concept, but that it where the good things end.

First of all, none of the characters except the twins had any personality. They were all flat and never developed very much, and when the author tried to develop them, it fell flat on its face. Orpheus was annoying and Malva (god, that's an ugly name) is obsessed with a country that doesn't exist. I thought that her obsession with Elgolia was going to be a major plot point, but it really wasn't. The love story was ridiculous, as the characters never even had a real conversation and then they acted like they'd known each other forever and were SO IN LOVE. I wanted to gag myself, seriously, it was so cliched. And it wasn't even written well!

The ending was SO unnecessary. I was reading it and I started yelling because it made NO sense. I'm not going to give it away, but if you like a book with a happy ending, don't read this book.

Also, the Archont was the most un-evil villain I've ever read about. We never find out why exactly he hates Malva and I'm sorry, but I don't think anyone would follow a 15 year old to the ends of the earth to kill her unless he had a good reason for it.

All in all, don't read this book. There were some good points, but mostly it was just really bad.

This book is totally derivative of so many better-written fantasy novels that I kept looking for things that must have come from other books instead of focusing on the story. The story itself was boring and predictable, never interesting enough to keep my attention for more than a few pages. The plot twists and turns, never seems to find a theme and ends with a completely negative finish. I started skimming pages just to get to the few parts that were interesting so I could justify the time I'd already spent reading. Don't waste your time--check out one of Tamora Pierce's absolutely incredible fantasies, something by Robin McKinley, or Ursula Le Guin. Now, THAT, would be worth the time to read it properly!