The Princess Blog

There are many fun mermaid books on sale this month for MerMay . One of the ones that stood out to me was My Fair Mermaid  by Sarah Beran . It seemed like such a novel idea to combine the story of "The Little Mermaid"  with Pygmalion / My Fair Lady . Although the book could have taken any number of directions to have an arrogant man convert a mermaid into human society, it turned out to be a pretty literal interpretation of the source material by creating a world where mermaids speak differently from humans due to living underwater and must improve their diction to be understood. I wasn't a huge fan of turning the original "Little Mermaid" character into a villain, but I did enjoy the story's unique focus on a related mermaid who followed her to land out of concern for her, which was similar to the "Sisters of the Sea" visual novel in Time Princess . Maribel is a mermaid with the unfortunate luck of being a cousin to Naia, the spoiled and selfish ...

Maiden of the Sea  is the second book I've read from Sarah Beran's Order of the Fountain series  and the third book in the series. My opinion of this series hasn't changed from what it was when I read Princess of the Beans . It uses popular fairy tale names and elements as a selling point and then removes the magic and whimsy that make these stories appealing. I've read some decent fairy tale adaptations that remove the magical elements  to create a sense of realism, but what's odd about this series is that while it still has magic in it, it removes the most iconic magical aspects of each fairy tale it retells. In the two books I've read so far, these include the magic beanstalk from "Jack and the Beanstalk," Rapunzel's impossibly long hair, and in the case of this "Little Mermaid" adaptation , the merfolk race and the whimsical undersea kingdom. Ariel is a maiden working in a temple who gave up her ability to use her legs when she went o...

Though it's been slow going, I've been trying to read all the promo releases from National Tell a Fairy Tale Day while still keeping up with newer books. The next one on my list was Princess of the Beans  by Sarah Beran , a retelling of both "Rapunzel" and "Jack and the Beanstalk."  I thought this was such a creative idea because both stories involve climbing tall towers, but unfortunately, Rapunzel's tower was not located at the top of a beanstalk in this version. Still, it was a sweet little romance story about rescuing a damsel in distress , with some heavy-handed Christian messaging mixed in. As the second book in a series of fairy tale adaptations called The Order of the Fountain, this story begins with a summary of the first book in the series that I found a little convoluted. There are plenty more books in the series after this one, so I hope the world and characters continue to improve. The first few chapters of this book were the roughest. Sa...