My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I don't know if it's just been a while since I've read a really decent book or something, but Ash Princess was everything I desperately needed it to be. The synopsis is reminiscent of Red Queen, but infinitely less whiney. Theo wasn't self entitled (cough, Mare) and Soren had a back bone to do what's right even though it can be scary and never moped. ( Cough, Cal).
Theo is the Ash Princess. Her people have been brutally murdered. Forced to live with the Tyrants who brutally murdered her people, in the place of her loved ones' deaths, she has been beaten (literally and figuratively) into submission. Those remaining of her people, in rebellion, are in hiding and she gave up long ago on seeing herself freed. She is cowed and begs her people to not rebel. For every act of rebellion they commit, she pays the price, often in blood.
When the Tyrant King forces her to a point she can never come back from, Theo must make a decision whether she will help take him down once and for all or continue living in fear.
Add in pirates, a tyrant, and heart breaking death. Well, Sebastian has got herself all the right elements to a best-seller, and I dare say it paid off.
I enjoyed this story. Theo isn't some heroine that suddenly just finds her calling and sticks to it and goes forward for courage. We are talking to someone who has been tortured her whole life and has the worst coming for her if she chooses to help what is left her of her people rise up. As heir to the throne who has been held her entire life, she must earn back her peoples' loyalty, trust, and help take down her oppressors from the inside. Sometimes though, it's easier to keep things status quo. She feels she owes it to her people to fight for them as she has NOT done hitherto, but her fear sometimes holds her back and questions whether it might be easier to just keep things as they are. She wiffle waffles and I love it, because it's real and it's raw.
She is a royal and a lady at court, but she can never forget who she is, wearing a crown made of ash to remind her that although she may a royal, she is princess of ruin. A princess of only ash.
I want the next book so desperately right now.
Also, I'm a sucker for pretty covers and it's got that.
View all my reviews