This was the last Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling that I’ve read. I haven’t found any others, so unless one of you, dear readers, knows of another one, this is the last of the series.
Entwined by Heather Dixon. Dixon boldly sets the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in the Victorian era, which we can tell by the clothes and the customs. (The cover, while beautiful, is much less historically accurate than the story.) She manages to give many more of her twelve princesses distinct personalities, better than any of the other books except for Wildwood Dancing, where there were only five sisters to keep straight. Blessedly, she even named them alphabetically – Azalea, Bramble, Clover, Delphinium, Evening Primrose, Flora, Goldenrod, Hollyhock, Ivy, Jessamine, Kale and Lily – making them the first dozen princesses I was actually able to keep track of. But onwards to the story. It’s the night of the Christmas Eve Ball. Azalea, the oldest princess, is hosting, due to Mother’s illness. Before the ball starts, Mother calls Azalea to her room and makes Azalea promise on her mother’s silver handkerchief to take care of her sisters, as well as talking about dancing. At the ball, Azalea meets a somewhat rumpled but very kind young gentleman, Lord Bradford, and it’s immediately clear that this is not the last we’ll see of him. Interestingly, Azalea is princess in a figurehead monarchy. The kingdom is run by the Parliament, which gives the royal family an allowance that isn’t quite enough to keep up the rambling, ancient palace. They also make the final choice on the spouse of the heir, which will make our Princess hesitant in matters of the heart. The country is run this way in large part in reaction to the defeated High King D’Eath, who in ancient times (Medieval? Enlightenment?) ruled the kingdom about as kindly as one might expect, given a name like D’Eath. He it was who built the palace, filling it full of secret passages and enchanted objects. Most of these are no longer in the castle, though one animated silver tea set remains.
The ball goes all right, despite all of the younger siblings hiding in the Christmas trees to watch. But in the morning, they discover that their mother has died, leaving new sister behind. The King – their father, though they call him the King – does not tell them in person. He only tells them that they will be in strict mourning for a year: All black clothes. All windows draped, all clocks stopped, no going outside except for church or Royal Business, and no dancing. But dancing is the girls’ sanity, an essential part of their relationship with each other and with their mother. So when they discover that there is a secret passage in their room that takes them not to a storage room, as they’d been told it would, but to an obviously enchanted dancing pavilion, they are delighted. They don’t ask very many questions of the pale, obviously magical man who invites them to come every night, saying that he is the Keeper of the castle. The reader will likely be more wary of him, even if he tells them that he is an ancient enemy of the High King D’Eath, trapped by him in the walls of the palace. He starts out creepy and gets truly scary, though at first he only reveals this side to Azalea.
In spite of this, the book felt much lighter than Wildwood Dancing – still probably appropriate in the teen books, rather than youth, but leavened by comedic attempts to find suitable partners for all three of the oldest sisters. There is a lot of discussion of the actual dances, so this is the book I’d recommend to dancers. (It’s rather funny how many books about dancing princesses gloss over the actual dancing.) There’s also a lot of family relationships, as the girls try to negotiate a new relationship with the King, now their only parent, no matter how cold and strict. This turned out well, though I found the King’s conversion to kindness a little too glib to be completely convincing. In any case, the story came to an exciting and satisfying conclusion, with Azalea doing a significant part of the rescue of the sisters herself. I think it’s being marketed as a teen book because of the focus on romance, though I didn’t find anything that would be inappropriate for older middle grade readers.
Fans of the book can find delightful princess Azalea paper dolls on the author’s website.
Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .
Snow in Summer by 
All Wound Up by 
Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins. Read by Paul Boehmer This was the first big book by Collins, much more famous now for The Hunger Games, which I haven’t yet read. The boy and I listened to this together. Gregor, aged 11 or 12, lives in New York City with his mother, grandmother, little sister, and baby sister, Boots, aged 2. His father disappeared a couple of years ago, leaving Gregor in charge of the family while his mother is at work. He’s serious about his responsibility, but an unbidden counter inside him keeps track of each day that his father has been gone. One day, he takes Boots down to the laundry room of their apartment building with him. While he’s busy with the washer, she explores the room. A large air vent has a loose cover – and soon Gregor is following Boots as a very strong draft pulls them down. There, two giant talking roaches take them to the humans of the Underland. This is a world of very pale-skinned, purple-eyed humans, who have been making a life in the Underland for the past 500 years, since their kingdom was founded by the Earl of Sandwich. Also in the Underland are the giant rideable bats, who form life partnerships with the humans similar to Pernese dragons, though later in life. Bats and humans together navigate their way among sometimes neutral, sometimes hostile giant cockroaches, spiders, and most dangerously, rats. All of these are human-sized or larger and can talk with humans. Gregor soon learns that he can’t just go back home, and that even if he could, his father is being held captive by the rats. One of the senior royalty of the Underland is convinced that Gregor is the Warrior foretold in a prophecy by the Earl of Sandwich. The prophecy foretells dangerous times for the Underworld, and says that a Warrior will come and ask for help with a Quest. It specifies the make-up of the party that should go on the quest and even how many of them will survive it. Although he himself doesn’t believe that he could be a Warrior, Gregor is persuaded to try to convince the Council to support him, if only because he knows he needs the help to find his father. Approval is given in large part because the rats are marching on the city in force. But the Quest will not be easy. The party includes Princess Luxa and Henry, both Underworld royalty a few years older than Gregor who look down on him; Gregor and Boots (mostly carried in a baby backpack on Gregor’s back) and Luxa and Henry’s bats. For the Quest to succeed, they must also find two Crawlers, two Spinners and one rat to join the party. Meanwhile, the rats are attacking the Underworld’s main human city. Everyone on the quest has to hope both that the quest will be successful and that the prophecy is right that completing Gregor’s quest will save the Underworld as well. Gregor especially grows as a character over the course of the story. He starts out a sympathetic character, caring so sweetly for his little sister, but must learn diplomacy and leadership along the way. It’s not exactly clear from Collins’s description, but it sounds like Gregor and his family might be African-American, which would make him a rare minority fantasy hero. Paul Boehmer’s narration, while perfectly expressive, is oddly precise – not quite British, but more carefully enunciated than standard American English and certainly nothing hinting at a regional or ethnic American accent. This is an exciting story with strong characters and a well-drawn setting. I should perhaps note that there isn’t any magic; the fantasy part seems to end with the existence of the Underworld and its giant inhabitants. I’m not sure it’s one of my forever-favorites, but I’d certainly recommend it to kids looking for an exciting series where it’s up to the kids to save the world. 
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Read by Wil Wheaton. It’s a dark, dystopian future. The Recession never ended, and the ongoing energy crisis has ended the era of easy travel. Most people are unemployed, living in large stacks of trailers just outside the city. Life in the real world is so grim that the vast majority of people spend all their time logged into the Oasis, an immersive on-line alternate reality. Getting on to the Oasis and its main planet are free; it sustains itself and a large portion of the overall economy by charging for on-line goods and travel to its millions of other planets. The Oasis was imagined and designed by a hard-core socially impaired geek by the name of James Halliday. When he dies without heirs, he sends out to all the millions of Oasis users an invitation to participate in a treasure hunt for three keys leading to the location of an Easter egg hidden in the game. Our hero is one Wade Watts, an orphan living in the trailer stacks who is attending his senior year of high school in the Oasis. He’s named his avatar Parzival after the Arthurian grail-seeker and is determined to find the egg himself. In addition to all the time he spends in the Oasis, he’s devoted himself to mastering the 1980s arcade, computer and role-playing games, movies and movies that were formative during Halliday’s teen years. Geek children of the 1980s, this book is for you. There are multiple clues and puzzles which you might be able to figure out before Wade if you are familiar with the right movie or game, and even if you don’t, the trivia lessons are fun. 
The Girl of Fire and Thorns by 
How to Knit a Heart Back Home by 
Bride and Prejudice. 
The Books of Elsewhere. The Shadows by 
alibrarymama 