Princess of Thorns by Stacey Jay

Title: Princess of Thorns
Author: Stacey Jay
Date Started: April 23
Date Finished: April 26
Format: ebook from the digital library

Here we go again with the Sleeping Beauty retellings, I’ll admit something though. Compared to While Beauty Slept that I reviewed last year, this book was a whole lot more entertaining and engaging. It reminded me a lot of Alanna: The First Adventure, but I’m jumping ahead of myself. There are two prophecies that you need to pay attention to. One deals with our heroine Aurora and the other deals with Niklaas. The first prophecy predicts a time when the ogres are going to try to take over and bring about a time of complete darkness. To do so, the blood of a child of briar is needed. The second prophecy deals with a king who cursed all his sons to turn into swans at the age of eighteen when they can inherit the throne so that way the king can rule forever.

Aurora and her brother Jor go to live with the fairies after her mother kills herself to pass on her fairy blessings to Aurora. They escape the Ogre Queen’s castle and separate so that way it is harder for the Queen to find them. But Jor gets captured on his way for his annual visit with Aurora. Now, she has to save him before the fall or else he will die. She is on her way to securing an army when she gets captured and is about to escape when she runs into Niklaas who was looking for her. But due to the way she is dressed he automatically assumes that she is her brother Jor. They both have motives. Aurora – or Ror for short – agrees to put in a good word for him with his sister (hilarity ensues) if he takes her to the Fleeting Hills so she can procure this army. He agrees despite his better judgment and a partnership is formed. But as they make the journey they become friends and slowly – at least for Ror – something else happens too. But with Ror not telling Niklaas about her true identity and with her fairy powers she isn’t sure that she can love.

Princess of Thorns had a really slow start as I tried to figure out the characters and the time jumps. I liked the fact that there were headers informing you about who’s POV the chapter – or bits of the chapter – were in. It helped immensely. Ror is a very different version of the Sleeping Beauty myth, she’s stronger and very stubborn. Niklaas is different from Prince Phillip too, he’s also really stubborn and he’s not quite the prince charming that I was expecting. But that’s a good thing. I love the fact that each had their own curse to deal with, although I was really annoyed when Ror and Niklaas kissed, especially because Ror knew what was going to happen to him if she did. As for the villain I was very confused by her. She called herself ‘we’ whenever her POV showed up and she did some really disturbing things, but in the end she tried to help Ror. Um…I’ve heard about redemption but I’ve never actually seen it in villains outside of a fanfiction.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. I was thoroughly impressed with this novel and I could not put it down for the life of me. The characters are very well written and the world is amazing. I love the fact that Aurora and Niklaas started out as friends and had some hardship before they really fell for each other and made their romance much more believable.

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