The three heroines of this book are familiar—Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White—but little else is. Based in a fantasy land where humans and fairies have a tenuous truce, the recently-married Cinderella survives an attack on her life and discovers her Prince has been kidnapped. She teams up with the other two princesses and sets out on a rescue mission. Hines does a good job of avoiding the princess stereotype (the women are all smart, ass-kicking beauties) and makes the back-story of the trio interesting while still familiar. Cinderella, for instance, with her history of being forced into drudgery by her step-family can’t stop thinking about how to remove stains even when in a sword fight! I also enjoyed the author’s wink to the reader by having the queen at the center of a large intelligence network named Queen Bea. There are some dark portions of the book as well, with the villains getting the upper hand and acting in truly evil fashions, not the comical evil the Disney incarnations have made popular. This is the first of a series, and I’ll certainly be back for more.
Danielle Whiteshore, formerly Danielle de Glas, would never be a proper princess.
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