Once Upon a Bibliophile

BOOK- The Princess Knight

AUTHOR- Cait Jacobs

GENRE- Romance, Fantasy

RATING- 3/5

STATUS- DNF

Ok. I’m going to start with all the things I liked about the Princess Knight.

1. Romance Subplot
2. Queernormative world
3. Disability rep
4. ummm…. there is no four

Yeah

This wasn’t my favorite. And, surprisingly, not for the reasons that I usually DNF romantasies. There were no perfect book boyfriends, no generic female leads. The characters were all unique, the male lead was sweet without being overly poetic, the female lead was strong without relying solely on physical strength and banter.

And I know what you’re going to say. Why did you DNF it if it has all the things you look for in a romantasy? Stop being so picky and just read the book already. And I can answer that question, dear reader, quite simply: it was boring.

PLOT

The Princess Knight tells the story of Clía, who, as you can guess, is a princess. It’s told from two POVs- Clía’s and Ronan’s. I know the novel is kind of a parody of Legally Blonde, but I’ve never watched it. I just liked the look of the book.

When Clía is rejected by the only man she’d ever thought she’d loved, she resolves to attend the brutal Caislean Costa, a school for warriors, to win him back. And if she can’t do that, well then, she’ll show him just how much of a mistake he made in rejecting her. Sure, she’s never held a sword before, but how hard can dueling really be?

Ronan had fought hard to win his place at Caislean Costa, and he’s definately not going to let some silly blonde princess distract him, even if she is, well…cute. He doensn’t want to be intrigued by her, but something about her keeps drawing him back. He tells himself there’s no harm in training her, even if his heart does race when she’s around.

But, as they say, love is a battlefield- and unfortunately for them, a very real war is looming on the horizon. It’s a fight that will threaten all their kingdoms, and most of all, test their hearts.

I have to admit, when I first bought it, the plot had me hooked. And though maybe it was the promise of a love triangle and not the actual plot that excited me, I was certain I was going to enjoy it.

And I did. For the first half, at least. There wasn’t anything truly special about the writing, but I did enjoy it. And I just want to warn you not to get your hopes up by the phrase ‘love triangle’. It didn’t really deliver. In fact, it wasn’t really a love triangle at all, now I think about it. More like a love-two-separate-couples-that-have-mutual-platonic-relationships-and-past-romantic-history.

Going back to the list I made at the beginning, there were a few specific areas that I liked about it. For one, simply the fact that it had a romance subplot. Not really because it was anything special, just that it existed. Another was the queernormative world the story was based in. I liked how there wasn’t a lot of attention drawn to the fact that most of the characters were LGBTQ+. It wasn’t something that needed special treatment, it was just a fact of the story. It’s quite rare that I ever discover fantasy books that do this. Not that I haven’t read many books that have LGBTQ+ rep, but that this was perhaps the first where nearly all of the characters were part of this community, and that was it. It wasn’t a whole ‘thing’- they just were.

But, despite this, the actual wordbuilding was less than amazing. Apart from a few vague impressions, there wasn’t really very much in terms of a world. Also, I don’t know if this is just a me problem but the map was way too small.

In terms of the actual plot, it could have been better. This might just be me, but I felt like some parts just hadn’t been done very well. A few aspects of the story were just plain confusing. There were two things going on at once really- an invasion from an enemy kingdom that involved some kind of pirates, and something about some gods and magical artifacts that may or may not have a connection to Clía’s sword ( I think it does but will probably never know).

The two co-plots probably do have some kind of connection, but it wasn’t very clear. In fact, not much of anything was very clear. I got the general gist that there was some kind of enemy that was invading them and they had to stop it- though there wasn’t really a ‘why’. There was something about a magical artifact, or maybe multiple magical artifacts, that could help them achieve this. And for some reason nobody is doing all that much about it apart from a few badly trained teens under constant supervision from a man who could probably achieve everything they were doing by himself in half the time it took them. Poor man. Plus, there was also a brief kind of academia plot that sort of faded away as other plots began to take shape. Which, actually, is OK with me because I don’t like academia (hooray for me).

And despite this confusion about what on earth was actually going on, it was very predictable. I know this seems somewhat contradictory, but it’s true. Though I had no clear idea of the overall plot, it was very easy to guess what was going to come next. And though at the start I was delighted at being able to correctly predict the events (and show off to my friends that I was a fortune teller), it quickly became tedious. I saw no point in carrying on with the novel if I could guess what happens at the end.

And to add onto this, the writing was a bit generic. No hate at all towards Cait Jacobs, and I’m not saying that it was bad…I’m just saying that it was very like other things I’ve read. Maybe because this is their first novel, but the writing felt a little like the author hadn’t yet found their style. It was full of quite cliche phrases and techniques, and though I don’t really think it’s ‘bad’, it was a little boring.

I think that it was a combination of this and the predictability of the plot that made me DNF it half way through. I just didn’t have any interest in it any more. I didn’t want to bore myself by reading things I didn’t find entertaining.

The writing worked perfectly fine to tell the story, but it wasn’t interesting. With some authors, there’s a magic to the way they write. Something about it that you can’t really put your finger on that makes you want to read more. It might be poetic prose, clever dialogue, bold characters… it changes with each author. And unfortunately, The Princess Knight just didn’t deliver in this area.

CHARACTERS

There aren’t really a lot of characters in The Princess Knight. Some fantasies (*cough* Falling Kingdoms *cough*) have way too many characters. Like, waaaaaaaaaaaay too many. And I’m glad to say that The Princess Knight had a perfectly sensible number of characters. There was no confusion over who Fred was and what relation he had with Sally’s mother and whether or not he owned a cat. The character list is mercifully short, sticking to a small group of heroes, a few villains and a couple of extras.

Another positive thing about the characters in the Princess Knight was the disability rep. Clía is autistic (although, as the author said, the word ‘autistic’ is never used on page so some people may view this as autistic coding instead of autistic rep) and Ronan suffers from chronic pain. I was so glad to find a fantasy that included people with disabilities. The only other time I have encountered this in a book is in the A Curse so Dark and Lonely series and spin offs by Brigid Kemmerer- read my review of Sparking Fire out of Fate here. The only other time. I have read a complete total of…seven fantasies with disability rep. In my entire life.

I find this pretty sad. While I have no personal experience with disability and cannot fully relate to these characters, I do know that disability rep is something we need to see more of in fantasy. I was super glad that I had found another book that had this kind of representation, and that not only did it have this rep but also that- as I was saying earlier- it wasn’t a huge ‘thing’. There was no special treatment given to those characters. I am very confident in saying that the challenges that Ronan and Clía faced would have been exactly the same as the challenges they would face if they weren’t disabled characters. And isn’t this what thing we’re looking for in disability rep?

However, though I definitely appreciated the representation, the characters themselves were…annoying.

That’s the only word that I could think of to describe them all. And it’s true. I found most of the characters and their relationships insufferable.

Clía did have an empowering character arc, but she never actually seemed to achieve much through it. There weren’t really any actual challenges for her to face as she proved herself worthy of Domhnall’s love. She learnt to sword fight in about 15 minutes, and there never was really anything she actually failed at to motivate this goal. Sure, she fell over during a training session, but surely there must be more of a reason for her abandoning her entire life and everything she’s ever known to go to some school for people who already know how to do everything that’s being taught there. I might have appreciated Clía more if she had better motivations. Something bigger to prove other than that she could swing a sword around a bit. Maybe even someone better to prove it to. But, above all else, she just annoyed me. I don’t really think it goes deeper than that really. She was a annoying, entitled princess with terrible motivation.

Ronan also annoyed me. He spent so much time talking about how much he wanted to achieve things and make his mentor proud and be the hero and then he didn’t actually do anything. He was a pretty shallow character to tell the truth. And very overrated. There was all this about how he’s the best sword fighter the world has ever known, but we never actually see any evidence of this fact. He seems pretty mediocre. And his loyalty just changed in the blink of an eye. One minute he was Domhnall’s absolute bestie, the next he was roasting him behind his back while he went out with his ex. Considering the fact that there was a whole thing going on here about how Domhnall was Ronan’s only friend and that they were basically brothers, all it took was someone to divert Ronan’s attention and that was it. They never had the same relationship again. I don’t know about you, but I can’t really root for a character who is that shallow. Roan never seemed to have any motivation either. His goal was never clear apart from making some distant tutor figure proud, and there wasn’t any ‘why’ behind, well, why he was doing anything. He just did it, and never really achieved anything out of it.

The rest of the characters were kind of meh. There wasn’t really strong enough relationships between the POVs and the other characters to see much of their personalities. They were just…there. And I know you can say that obviously Clía and Sarait have a know each other very well and Ronan and Domhnall know each other very well, but the number of interactions they made with each other that were actually meaningful were limited.

There isn’t really much else to say. As I mentioned earlier, there isn’t actually very many characters in the Princess Knight. But the ones who were there weren’t the best.

CONCLUSION

Overall, I think the Princess Knight did have a lot of potential. However, I also believe that it didn’t quite live up to it. The plot was confusing at best and predictable at worst, and I just couldn’t really make that connection with the characters that I search for. That said though, I was glad to see that a fantasy book with this much LGBTQ+ and disability rep is out in the world.