geri_chan | The Princess Series by Jim Hines

I've been meaning to rec this for a long time, and with National Blog Posting Month, now seems like a good time to stop procrastinating. The Princess Series by Jim Hines is a wonderful fantasy series with strong female characters, and a must-read for people who love fantasy and/or fairy tales.

I first stumbled across the author's blog via various posts linked on Metafandom, and he always seemed to have interesting and thoughtful things to say. I was particularly impressed by his post on Elizabeth Moon's 9/11 blog post, Citizenship, because he pretty much expressed everything that I felt, much more eloquently than I could have managed. This is supposed to be a rec post for Hines's books, so I don't want to dwell overlong on Moon, but as a Japanese-American and a descendant of immigrants, her essay touched a deeper nerve than I expected, and I really appreciated Hines's rebuttal to her. At the time, I made a rant on IJ about it that was locked and filtered to a few close friends, because there were a few people on my F-list who enjoy a good political debate, and all I wanted to do was vent my frustration, not get into a debate. I've unlocked the post so that people can read it if they wish and understand why I was upset, though I'm still not interested in debating the validity of Moon's views.

Anyway, I was really impressed by Hines, and by this time I had found out that he was a fantasy author, so I decided to check out his books. The local library has the first book in the Princess Series, The Stepsister Scheme, so I borrowed it. It's a wonderful story about what happens to Cinderella after "happily ever after"--a concept that I really love! Cinderella (real name Danielle) is living happily with her prince, Armand, but things are not quite perfect. She has to resist the urge to clean up spills and messes even though she now has servants to take care of such things, and she finds her lessons on royal etiquette to be tedious and boring. Still, she is loved by her husband and her in-laws, and for the most part life is good. That is, until her stepsister Charlotte shows up seeking revenge by attacking Danielle and kidnapping Armand. That's when Danielle find out that two of Queen Beatrice's servants, Talia (Sleeping Beauty) and Snow (White), are actually a sort of secret service for the Queen: Talia is an expert warrior and Snow is a sorceress. Together, the three of them set out to rescue Armand and bring him home.

This is an awesome book! It has magic, adventure, humor, and best of all, three very strong heroines who don't need any men to protect them, and it passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. I loved the strong friendship between Talia and Snow, and the friendship that develops between them and Danielle. (Talia and Snow are reluctant to take the princess along at first, assuming that she'll just be a burden, but Danielle is eventually able to prove herself useful and earn their respect, although the more cynical Talia is frequently annoyed by Danielle's idealism.)

You know how good this book was? I was reading it while riding the bus, and got so engrossed in the story that I went two stops past where I was supposed to get off! I loved it so much that I had to go and buy the other books in the series, too! I should warn that the later books are a bit darker than the first (although there is still humor in them as well), since most of the other princesses did not receive the type of happy ending that Danielle did. But they are all great stories and well worth reading.

Hines has also written other novels and short stories (see here for his full bibliography), and I intend to work my way through those as well. (I'm currently reading Kitemaster, a short story anthology so far released only as a Kindle or Nook e-book.)