The Bibliophile's Bookshelf

Title: A Dance of Silver and Shadow: A Retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princess

Series: Beyond the Four Kingdoms #1

Author: Melanie Cellier

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Retelling, Clean Romance

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

When Princess Liliana and her twin sister set sail for new lands, Lily hopes to find adventure and romance. But the people of Marin live under the shadow of a curse—one powerful enough to destroy entire kingdoms. To protect them all, Lily and eleven other princesses are forced to participate in a mysterious and secret tournament.

Lily spends her nights competing in a magical underground realm and her days unraveling the dangers of this new court. Although she needs the help of the Marinese prince, Lily knows she can’t let herself grow too close to him. There’s no time for romance when the duchy is about to fall to the encroaching darkness and the winner of the tournament faces a terrible fate.

But Lily and her twin have a secret advantage. And Lily grows increasingly determined to use their magical bond to defeat the tournament, save the princesses, and free Marin. Except she might have to sacrifice true love to do it.

In this reimagining of the classic fairy tale, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, there’s a lot more at stake than worn out dancing slippers. – summary from Goodreads

This book was a nice continuation of Cellier’s world!

This book follows twins Lily and Sophie from The Princess Companion, maybe three years after the ending of The Princess Search.

I struggled with this book. I loved, loved, loved the Four Kingdoms series and all of the characters and stories involved with that world. So, finishing that series was already a little rough. But I did love the twins, so I was excited for their story. However, the writing in this book was different from the writing in the other books.

We start right in on the action with this book. While that did get the story rolling, I would have liked a more gradual build up. There also wasn’t much of reminiscing on other characters. I would have liked for Alyssa and Max to be talked about more, but they weren’t part of the story, so it makes sense.

The story itself was good, though more action heavy than the other books. It also had more magic than her other books, which I didn’t mind too much.

This is a Twelve Dancing Princess retelling, which I have found hard to find. I really enjoyed that side of things and I loved the way it was twisted.

The only Twelve Dancing Princess I have encountered is the Barbie version, which I love! I liked this one and I liked that all the princesses weren’t related. I don’t know why that stands out to me, but it does.

The way this was done was so great. Lily and Sophie arrive in a new land on the day the Princess Tourney starts. They are forced to participate in the event. Now every three nights until the beginning of the summer, all twelve princesses attend a ball and dance until a bell rings. When the bell rings they enter into this room and descend into a special place (I don’t know if it’s another realm or magical area) and they have to compete in different challenges. I loved that the whole story didn’t revolve around dancing, though it was still an important part, and that they had to participate in different competitions. It reminded me a little of the trials in The Princess Fugitive.

The trials themselves were interesting and engaging to read. They weren’t necessarily my favorite parts of the book, but I did enjoy reading them.

Of course, I was there for the romance. This romance did seem a little sudden, but I was still totally rooting for our characters!

I loved Lily! I liked her in the previous books, and she has really grown up since then. I really liked how much she wanted to protect her sister. I also liked how she grew throughout the book to care for others in a similar way she cares for Sophie. I liked having this protective streak being in a female character! A part of Lily’s stories that I thought was really great was how she learned how to be a person separate from her twin.

I also really enjoyed Jon! I think he could have been on the page a little more, but I did like him. And I liked his relationship with Lily. They were very cute together and worked well together.

I think a part of the problem with this book is that it was introducing a whole new world and cast of characters, as well as setting the foundation for future books, it was hard to absorb all of the story. I will probably like this book a little more the next time I read it.

There was definitely more peril in this book. The other books had rebellion, but after reading this book, the danger felt much closer to the surface, which did add some nice tension and urgency.

I liked this new world, and there are definitely a lot of problems our Four Kingdom protagonists are going to help fix. We also got to meet a lot of new characters, whose stories I am excited to read!

We did get more of a sense of Sophie in this book, but the next book does dive further into her, which is exciting. Celine was in this book, but it was disappointing. She was such a spunky character in The Princess Search, I was so excited to see her, but she was very much a background character.

A Dance of Silver and Shadow is a competition-based retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, with a new world and characters, romance, friendship, and sisterhood! This is a lovely beginning to Cellier’s addition to the Four Kingdoms world!