The Princess Blog

It feels like just yesterday that the new animated She-Ra reboot  premiered on Netflix with its masterfully executed premiere season . Just a few months later, the show's Facebook page posted an announcement that the second season would drop on April 26th. That's less than a month away! The page had also been heavily promoting their presence at WonderCon  this weekend. Last night, I finally found out why. As it turns out, the WonderCon panel for She-Ra and the Princesses of Power premiered the trailer for the second season! The trailer doesn't reveal a whole lot of the new season's story, but since it is reported to have a scant seven episodes , there might not be much that they could reveal in a minute and a half. Reports from the panel  reveal that an additional five clips that were previewed there as well. Hopefully, these clips will also be released to the public as the second season grows closer. The majority of the trailer's visuals consist of tradition

I was so impressed with A.G. Marshall 's adaptation of "The Princess and the Pea"  that I simply could not wait to dive into the next book in the Fairy Tale Adventures series. Princess of Secrets  takes place immediately after the events of Princess of Shadows , so it's best to read these two in order. The book starts out with Prince Alaric's brother, Prince Stefan, sneaking away to find Princess Carina so that she can be Lina's maid of honor in her wedding. Carina is the only friend Lina made after being asleep for a hundred years and waking up to find that everyone she knew was gone. Once Stefan sets off on his quest, the book becomes a whirlwind adventure of magic, romance, and fun that is every bit as engaging as its predecessor. I was amazed by how well A.G. Marshall was able to combine the elements of the original "Frog Prince"  with mermaids, sea monsters, and more. If you recall from my review of Princess of Shadows , Princess Carina is

Some time ago, I promised that I would turn my story The Stolen Jewel  into an original full-length screenplay under the UCLA Professional Program for Screenwriting . I am pleased to announce that I successfully completed my polished first draft a few weeks ago. The Stolen Jewel  is not the first princess story I have ever written, but it is one of the few that was not adapted from a pre-existing fairy tale . Through the program, I received incredibly valuable feedback that carried my writing to a level that I didn't even realize was possible. I also learned a lot about how people respond to modern princess stories and how that attitude has changed over the years . I am so happy with how  The Stolen Jewel  has turned out, and I would like to share some of my experience working on it with you. My intention with The Stolen Jewel  was to reverse the tired old "Cinderella" formula of "rags to riches" by telling the story of a princess who starts out having

Lucy Tempest  is the hottest new author among the indie fairy tale adaptation scene. I was a little hesitant to read her premiere gender-bent "Aladdin" novel Thief of Cahraman  because it required me to purchase and read two other novels, Prince of Cahraman  and Queen of Cahraman  just to find out how it ends. I've enjoyed other trilogies  that told a complete story within each book while just leaving one thing unresolved at the end to make way for a sequel, but that was not the case here. It was a bit of a struggle for me to complete all three books within the course of a week so that I could write a review, especially when so few important things happened in the story until the end. In fact, I would even say it would be possible to skip over the second book entirely without missing too much of the overall story. Of course, this is speaking from my own personal preference. If you're the type of person who doesn't like your stories to end in a single book, you m

It would be impossible for me to write this post without spoiling the latest episode, so go ahead and watch Rapunzel and the Great Tree  if you haven't seen it yet before reading on. I was surprised that this hour-long episode was not promoted as a major special at all as far as I could tell. Rapunzel and the Great Tree was a crucial turning point in the plot and should have been treated as such. It brought back all of the things that we have been waiting since the season premiere to learn more about, such as the character of Adira, the significance of Varian's father, the meaning of the moon symbol next to the Sun Drop symbol on Adira's scroll, and the black rocks, which created the events that kicked off the series from the very beginning. Rapunzel and her friends are traveling to a place called the Dark Kingdom, which is where the mysterious rocks originate from. If that doesn't sound foreboding enough already, Disney also took some pretty big risks in the latest

I was fortunate enough to receive a free ebook of Princess of Shadows  by up-and-coming fairy tale author A.G. Marshall from a promotion on Facebook. Since the book was named directly after the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale,  I was expecting a fairly direct adaptation. Instead, I was blown away by A.G. Marshall's originality. The book is a "fish out of water" story that delves into the creation of mythology and legend. The protagonist wakes up in another time that she knows nothing about, which allows the reader to explore this new world with her. I am a huge proponent of "fish out of water" stories, so the Fairy Tale Adventures series  is one that I will be following closely from this point on. Princess of Shadows  tells the story of a girl named Lina who wields a magic ring and fights goblins in the shadow world. Due to a sleeping spell that allowed her to stay in the protect the world from some dangerous threats, she wakes up to find that a century h

Is Disney ever going to slow down ? You would think with all the live-action remakes  and sequels  that they are releasing this year, they would want to save something for the next year or two, but you would be wrong. It isn't enough that 2019 is jam-packed with  live-action remakes  and animated sequels  because Disney  announced last week  that they are pushing up the release date for a sequel to one of their live-action remakes. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil , the next chapter to their 2014 flick that told the story of S leeping Beaut y  from an new perspective, is coming this October. To be fair, Maleficent  is different from Disney's other live-action remakes because it is not an unapologetic carbon copy that is doomed from to be inferior to the original from conception. With a script by the Disney Princess of screenwriting , Linda Woolverton , the movie puts a feminist spin on a fairly outdated tale about a damsel in distress  who needed true love's kiss to restore he

The Tower Princess  by Shonna Slayton  turns the Shakespearean story of "Romeo and Juliet" into a beautiful fairy tale. Outside of a certain famous  Taylor Swift music video , Shakespeare is not the first place most writers turn to when looking to adapt a fairytale, so it was a breath of fresh air for me. Shonna is a huge fan of fairy tales in general and has a wonderful Facebook group for other fairy tale lovers . Her passion is clear in this book through her intricately fleshed out medieval world and original mythology surrounding it. The prologue alone told an expertly crafted fable that developed an intriguing backstory for the troubled kingdom of Morlaix and those who reside within it. Her poetic use of language and world-building drew me into the story before I even met the main characters. The setting of The Tower Princess  reminded me a bit of Neil Gaiman's Stardust . Both stories have protagonists whose lands are blocked by a mysterious forbidden wall. In t

At long last, today marked the return of Tangled: The Series  or Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure  or whatever they've decided to call it this month. This show has a history of taking long breaks  with no rhyme or reason. It's a shame because it's such an engaging series that surpasses some of Disney's previous movie spin-off shows  by miles. The last episode to air until now was "Happiness Is..."  which was over six months ago! Today's episode, "Peril on the High Seas" finally saw the main cast escape from the weird island they were trapped with the silly talking German leaves. After leaving its audience stranded at sea for so many months, Disney has finally thrown Rapunzel a bone. Instead of just one episode a week, most Sundays in March will boast two new episodes of the show, allowing us to quickly catch up with the rest of the second season. I assume this is due to their production schedule being so far ahead of the episodes that have actua

Pathways  by Camille Peters is a new series of fairy tale adaptations that is currently on sale for $0.99. I couldn't argue with that price, so I decided to check it out. The book is loosely based on "Rumpelstiltskin" and "The Princess and the Pea."  It's different from the other fairy tale novels I've been reviewing in this blog because it lacks the suspense and adventure that they had and focuses entirely on romance. In fact, the story has no villain at all and very little conflict, making it a slow read. It seems like something that would be right my alley with my love of princesses and romance, but none of the characters were particularly appealing, especially the love interest. By the end of the book, I had absolutely no desire to see Eileen get together with Aiden. Like many princess stories, the main character in Pathways starts out as a peasant girl. Eileen is a skilled artist, a lot like Elaine from Goldheart , another "Rumpelstilt