Gabrielle here!
For our last book review, Emily wrote about Shannon Hale's Princess Academy, so for this review, I'm tackling the story's sequel: Palace of Stone. Many fans enter a cold sweat when rumors of a sequel to their favorite book or movie arise—especially if it's for a story originally conceived as a stand-alone project. American author Dean Koontz explains how this is because “too many sequels diminish the original.” So when should an artist leave a story alone and when should they continue? If a bad sequel can erase or diminish the original, why risk tainting the original product?
Shannon Hale’s sequel Princess Academy: Palace of Stone, published seven years after the original bestseller, demonstrates how a well-crafted sequel can not only expand the story’s world, but also make the original work more impactful.
A Fairy Tale Specialist
Shannon Hale entered the literary world with her debut novel The Goose Girl in 2003—a middle grade retelling of the Grimm’s fairy tale. With this award-winning fairy tale retelling under her belt, it's no surprise that she published The Princess Academy two years later. The story of mountain girl Miri learning the power of education wrapped with fairy tale charm earned Hale a Newbery Honor award.
The World’s a Lot Bigger
In Princess Academy, Miri uses what she learned to improve the village on Mount Eskel. At the beginning of Palace of Stone, Miri’s friend and betrothed of Prince Steffan, Britta, summons the graduates of the Princess Academy to join her in the royal court in Asland. Now Miri must leave the world she’s grown up in and helped grow to experience the politics of court life.
After spending all of book one at Mount Eskel, moving to the larger and more diverse Asland is refreshing and fascinating. For Miri, Asland means advancing her education, and Hale uses this opportunity to introduce fundamental ideas about rhetoric and philosophy in ways accessible for younger readers. Hale also uses the expanded world to expand the theme of the power of education she set up in Princess Academy. Here, education isn’t just the gateway for change in one village, it’s the gateway for change in the whole kingdom—and the gateway for revolution.
A Recontextualized Conclusion
A common pitfall of sequels is that, in an effort to raise the stakes, it undoes what the first entry accomplished and renders its conclusion meaningless. However, Hale avoids that issue; she makes the conclusion of book one matter so much that it creates the main conflict of book two.
Princess Academy gets a happily ever after that fits the fairy tale genre: Miri leads the girls to stand up to the bandits that have captured them, and Britta, revealed to be the childhood sweetheart of Prince Steffan, ends up getting chosen to marry him. However, that happiness is put into question in Palace of Stone.
Many Aslandians are furious that Britta, a noble girl, cheated the system and robbed the kingdom of their first common queen who could have advocated for them. A happy love story isn’t enough sustenance for starving citizens. Even though Britta is the best girl for Steffan, Miri is forced to wrestle with whether Britta is the best queen for Asland. Princess Academy shows how education empowers, and Palace of Stone forces Miri to consider the responsibility that comes with power. Just as Miri is challenged in the face of new concepts, Hale challenges her readers to think deeply in the safety of a fairytale
While Palace of Stone builds upon Princess Academy, many of the elements of Palace of Stone’s climax are very similar to Princess Academy’s climax. Once again the girls are trapped with an antagonist and must work to defeat him. However, the comradery in Palace of Stone rings less true than in Princess Academy; in Princess Academy the girls spent most of the book learning how to work together, but Miri’s political pondering meant she spent most of her time away from the others girls. For a book that spent so much time advancing the ideas of Princess Academy, Palace of Stone’s climax could have used that same innovation.
A Worthwhile Adventure
Fans of Princess Academy need not fret; Palace of Stone is a sequel worth returning to the world for. Hale demonstrates what a sequel should do—expand the world, expand the stakes, and expand the characters—all while maintaining the charm of the first book. Even if readers missed this book when it first came out, Palace of Stone is a worthwhile read for both young and old fans of the genre.
See you guys in two weeks for the start of our next series! In the meantime, bee brilliant!
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