Princess Academy

I tend to read several books at the same time, shifting from one to another. Once in a while, though, I tend to read one book all the way through without switching, since the book is really good.

This is one such book. Princess Academy is sort of a fantasy-type book, but it covers a variety of areas. To start off, Miri, the young girl, lives with her family on a mountain where the people dig out a stone called linder.

The people are being cheated by the traders, but they don't know it. They are looked down upon by the “lowlanders,” but they do know that. It's a life they are content with.

One day, a representative from the king arrives and tells them that a bunch of religious men have decided that the next princess will be coming from the girls that live on that mountain, and they will be required to attend an academy to prepare them to be a princess. One girl will be chosen from that group to marry the prince.

It's not a voluntary move. Soldiers are there to make sure everyone complies, and you get a feeling of a dictatorship sort of government that will use force against it's own people to get whatever it wants. Miri has to attend the academy, whether she wants to or not.

The rest of the story involves her time at the academy with the other girls, under the thumb of the government's appointed tutor. The tutor uses harsh discipline against the girls, and Miri ends up becoming isolated from the other girls since she favors all the girls running away back to their homes.

Then there's the matter of the prince showing up and turning out not seeming to be interested in any of the girls. There's also the group of bandits that wants to hold everyone hostage, an attack by the villagers against the bandits, and the ability of the mountain people to send images through the stone of the mountain.

It's a really, really good story, one of the best I've read in a long time.


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