Review: The Princess Seeks Her Fortune by Mary Catelli

Not all modern fairy tale fantasies are tongue-in-cheek….

Alissandra is the middle princess and the best one – just ask her elderly aunt, Donata. Alissandra’s older sister Esmeralda and younger sister Iolande know this is not mere bragging on Donata’s part, as do her parents, and they hate Alissandra for it. It does not help that the middle princess recently used her dowry to pay the debts of a dead woman whose corpse would have been left to rot in the local chapel otherwise. A princess pay a commoner’s debts to secure the woman’s funeral? Whoever heard of such a thing?!

Hoping for a brief break from her family’s sniping, Alissandra and her maid Lizina go out to deliver some shirts which the middle princess has made for the orphanage. But that is when fate intervenes….

The Story

As they make their way to the orphanage, Lizina asks why Alissandra paid for the woman’s funeral. Certainly, the dead woman did charitable work, ministering to those afflicted by a plague until she herself fell ill and perished. But what made Alissandra commit this act of charity?

Irritated by the topic since she recently overheard her family discussing it, Alissandra looks at the other woman and pointedly asks, “What was I supposed to do?”

Lizina accepts this answer in silence and continues following her mistress into town. Along the way the two run into a blind girl trying to get water from a well, but most of it is on her little dress. Smiling kindly, Alissandra helps her get a drink, only for the “little girl” to smile and stare straight at her with apparently sightless eyes. The “girl” promises that every time the princess washes her hands, lilies will fall from them and every time she combs her hair, roses will fall from it. The “girl” is actually one of the Fair Folk and she disappears as soon as she has made this proclamation.

Alissandra soon discovers that the fairy is right; roses fall from her hair when she brushes it, and every time she washes her hands lilies fall from them. When her sisters try to receive their own gift it naturally goes wrong: Esmeralda is cursed to leave a stinking trail of mud wherever she goes, as well as for rotten fruits and vegetables to fall whenever she speaks. Meanwhile, Iolande is cursed to echo the last word that her oldest sister says whenever she speaks. Rather than tell their two daughters off for getting themselves into this mess, the king and queen agree to let them go on a quest to “save [themselves]” from the curse. Their parents also plan to send Alissandra along with them as their perfumer, since the smell of the roses and lilies she sheds counteracts the stink of Esmeralda’s curse.

But Alissandra’s not going to let them get away with that. She packs up her things and goes to seek her fortune, with Lizina her only companion. She rescues several birds along the way and acquires valuable feathers after assisting each group of avians. When she and Lizina arrive in the next kingdom they hear strange rumors about the prince there, leading Alissandra to form a plan….

The Characters

Alissandra is not your stereotypical strong female character who happens to be a princess. Despite not wielding a sword or possessing any magic beyond that gifted to her by the Fair Folk, Alissandra is a no-nonsense princess who is genuinely kind and loving even when it hurts. Having her whole family essentially hate her for showing them up causes her a lot of pain, but she keeps going all the same, which makes her very admirable. She also never gives up and is always thinking, which enables her to not only save her future husband, but to help him save her!

Lizina is a very mysterious woman. She only recently began working at the castle and she doesn’t talk much. Nor does she react very often. But she backs Alissandra’s every decision and comes to help her when she needs it most. Given she has no weapons or magic of her own this seems a strange thing – until her secret is finally revealed.

The World

It is world where fairy tales are real, and the authoress does not poke tongue-in-cheek fun at the stories that inspired her work. Rather, Ms. Catelli crafts a world fraught with peril, one where those who ignore the stories are doomed to find a sticky end of some kind. Her fae are also not the sexy honeypots of the Dresden Files; they are inhuman creatures who long for substance, for reality. They are canny and very, very dangerous, so trifling with them ignorantly is not recommended!

Politics

None.

Content Warning

Some fairy tales have gruesome ends, and while these do not appear on camera, be ready for some Brothers Grimm type deaths to be mentioned. A few mentions of maternal care of an infant are also made. The book nevertheless earns a PG rating, as it is accessible even for young readers.

Who is it for?

Fairy tale fans will love this book. Those who enjoyed Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones or Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles will find this novel hits the spot, albeit it possesses a far more serious tenor than those works. Anyone who loved Inkheart, the movie or the trilogy of novels by Cornelia Funke, will also like this novel, as it similarly earnest and treats the material from which it borrows with great respect. Romance lovers will enjoy this book, too, as it is something of a slow burn low-fantasy series. Clean romance readers will like it as well, and anyone looking for a warm comfort novel they can pick up whenever the world gets dark will want The Princess Seeks Her Fortune on their shelves or ebook files.

Why buy it?

It is a good story that pays homage to the fairy tales of old while creating its own world. There is mystery as well as good triumphing over evil, true love, princes and princesses rescuing each other, and all the good things Disney no longer gives us. What better reasons could there be to buy such a novel?