Ani, a crown princess, learns at an early age that her special gifts are not those valued by her queen mother and her future subjects. She is eventually sent to marry a prince in a different kingdom, but along the way is overthrown by her lady-in-waiting. Ani becomes a servant, tending geese, while she searches for a way to return to the marriage and throne that is rightfully her own.

Hale has reimagined the story in such a way as to give us a strong, if flawed, heroine with a conscience. In this book, the reader isn't left wondering how a princess could allow herself to be displaced so easily from her birthright. We are also given a magical reason for Ani's successful sojourn with geese. Ultimately, Hale's prose is the book's greatest asset. Ani and her world are vivid creations, ready to be shared during a long, quiet read.

If you enjoy fairy tale novelizations, such as those by Robin McKinley and Donna Jo Napoli, this book will make a great addition to your bookshelf. If you simply like historical fantasy, forget the fairy tale, this novel will also please. Royalty, deception, intrigue, treason, and redemption make up a story that doesn't obviously derive from a fairy tale.


A lovely retelling of a fairy tale about a wronged Princess with a special gift   November 21, 2006
 18 out of 18 found this review helpful



One of my very fave fairy tales as a very young Mir was "The Goose Girl". I especially loved reading aloud the rhymes--'Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it/Sadly, sadly, would she rue it," and "Blow, wind, blow." I was horrified in that particular, sensitive way of children that someone would decapitate a lovely horse such as Falada, the beloved, talking horse of the princess protagonist. Clearly, evil was afoot if such a dastardly deed was conscionable. I imagined Curdken's chase for his cap. (In my chikdhood's version of the tale, that was his name. In other versions--and in this retelling--it's Conrad's hat that goes rolling over hill and dale, sparking his pursuit. And I delighted in the horrible, terrible justice that befell the villainess. Just thinking about it makes me feel 6 all over again, feeling the magic of the story--all the stories--and how to a child, all this was so plausible: that a horse should talk, that the lock of hair should speak (some versions have drops of blook on a hanky), that a princess should command the wind, that justice would prevail.

Shannon Hale has taken that brief, bloody, magical tale that may be familiar to you and fleshed it out in a story written for a YA audience, but sufficiently skilled, lyrical, and well-plotted in the telling that an adult like me was engrossed and loath to put it down even to have supper.

In this retelling, the Princess Anidora-Kiladra (Anifor short) is a misfit in her own family. Even as a newborn she evidenced a strangeness: She didn't open her eyes for three days, not until her aunt (gifted with a special "speech") spoke her into wide-eyedness. This hint of a special power of speaking is hinted at from the opening, but develops beautifully. We see the not-well-loved child, Princess Ani, grow close to her aunt, who can speak to animals. She learns the language of swans, she learns some of the bird dialects, and she senses something latent in herself, something she cannot fully enunciate.

It turns out that out of political considerations (fear of war), the Queen--who has the gift of people speech, ie persuasive to humans) betroths Ani to the prince of the neighboring acquisitive, hawkish kingdom. En route (as in the fairy tale) Ani's lady in waiting, Selah, who is deceitful and potent in people speech, gains many of the guards to her side, and they mutiny. Ani must hide in the forest of this foreign land, where she is befriended by a forest widow and her son.

Ani ends up, as the Princess in the original tale, working as a goose girl for the king whose son she had been fated to marry. Without a persuasive gift of speech of her own, she is at the mercy of the powers around her. From privilege to the lowest echelon of society. A drastic change of status.

What will she do?

She ponders how to fix what has been damaged (and it's more than just her status). And, in the process, she begins to develop her gift. She learns goose speech, which is (surprisingly) not like swan speech. It's a gift that will serve her well. The start of a new journey of acquisitions--of insight, of power, of perspective, of friends, of confidence.

Through the treacheries and friendships and tests and hardships, she begins to understand what her privileged and curtailed palace life had kept her from learning. And she learns one very important thing: She can speak to the wind. The fairy tale glosses over this great gift. Hale develops it as part of the evolving plot and part of the evolving, maturing Ani.

We know, from the fairy story, that she will get her prince, and their romance develops believably and sweetly in Hale's tale, somewhat reminiscent of EVER AFTER, the film retelling of Cinderella. We sense that her trials will only make her a better future ruler, one who has walked in the shoes of the poor and oppressed and outcast and unjustly accused.

Because it is a fairy tale retold, we know the ending though not all the details of how to get there. The special pleasure here is in the details.

A marvelous, magical story. RECOMMENDED for young and middle-aged and old.

Mir of Mirathon blog


Beautiful read-aloud   August 1, 2003
 10 out of 10 found this review helpful

I had this book read aloud to me as I nursed my new baby. Although it's prose, it reads beautifully, like poetry. I was captivated by the multi-sensory descriptions, which drew us right into Ani's world. Towards the end, our reading sessions lengthened because we just couldn't wait to find out what was going to become of the heroine! While the story is intended for young adults, any grown up would enjoy this beatiful novel.


A good read, but not her best work   June 8, 2007
 7 out of 14 found this review helpful

Even if you didn't like the book, you must agree that it was well written. Shannon Hale does a marvelous job of story-telling. Some of it was predictable, but the characterization was fantastic and the world she creates easy to visualize. There is one thing I'll bring up for those concerned with content. One of the characters tells a story about women baring their breasts. It was an unnecessary addition to anotherwise perfectly clean story. All three of the books in this trilogy have things in them that really could have been left out and been much better books for it. I'd recommend "Princess Academy" before recommending this one.


Dragged on FAR too longy   June 19, 2004
 5 out of 20 found this review helpful

As someone who has never heard the actual Grimm fairy tale about the goose girl/princess, I can't exactly judge this book against the original story. As a story in itself, I found it just okay. We are first introduced to Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree when she is just a young girl, and helped by her aunt, discovers she has the ability to speak to animals. As the first child born to the King and Queen, she is supposed to be first in line to the throne, but Ani (as she is called) doesn't really feel like she fits in. After her father dies, the Queen announces that Ani's younger brother will take the throne and Ani will be send to marry the prince of Bayern, a nearby country that Kildenree has only a "civil" relationship with. Ani, her guards and her lady-in-waiting, Selia, set off on the long journey to Bayern, only to find out that Selia has other plans. Ani eventually arrives in Bayern, but must be careful to blend in. She ends up taking a job as goose girl. While I think this first book by the author was good, it wasn't GREAT. Too many characters and the fact it dragged on in some spots made me not like it as much as I could have. I think I might check out the next book by Hale however, because it centers on interesting and little developed character that appeared in this book.