Christian Endres

Heartily sick of getting abducted, Princess Narvila of Besgios joins the mercenary group tasked with rescuing her from the latest captors. Normally, this would feel like a questionable choice for any sheltered medieval maiden, had the mercenaries in question not been all women: ex-princesses themselves if you can believe it, hence the name the princesses (note the italicised spelling).

As much as Narvila expects to have hardships to overcome, it still comes as an unwelcome surprise when her show more fighting skills just don't get better, despite her comrades taking turns teaching her. So the mercenaries propose a deal: Narvila gets to train and fight alongside the princesses on a trial basis for the following months, and they'd all make a decision by the time the most anticipated royal wedding rolls around.

The story as a whole is fairly predictable: seemingly unsuitable underdog determinedly follows their dream and eventually comes out victorious with a few heroic acts to spare. I don't personally look for complete originality in a story, especially as I've been known to fully enjoy the odd clichéd trope. And this story actually had a high chance of success if it weren't for the odd pacing and overly detail-oriented writing style.

Over half of the book serves as build-up for the main fight, which I have no qualms about since that's how Narvila's eventual heroic acts make sense. What I do take issue with, is the rushed writing that barely gives individual episodes a page or two, before moving on to the next level of the protagonist's training. With a book of almost 500 pages, this resulted in dozens of tiny episodes that kind melted together in one large mix of entrails, severed limbs, vomit and bloodied heroines.
Yes, I insist on being this graphic, when the author persists in his descriptions of the above, in excruciating detail. Interestingly enough, he draws the line at sex scenes which only get very short and euphemistic mentions, be they heterosexual or lesbian couplings.

The character development is where Christian Endres most shines though. At least when it comes to the main cast. Narvila and the mercenary princesses are a set of truly badass women, who're guaranteed to garner the admiration of even the most skeptical reader.

When it comes to the secondary characters however, we get an extremely mixed bag. If it's a princess, chances are that they'll be contributing to the storyline in a significant manner. If not, they'll generally end up as disposable fodder with a fancy name. And boy does the author have a thing for long, medieval-sounding names: Aibhilyn, Cinnascesczi, Jaskdis, Lafehz, Beclisos, Ilfyng, etc. Though conveniently enough, he also immediately provides a shortened version for the more important ones.

Score: 2.7/5 stars

Truth be told, I was going to drop this after 100 pages, because the pacing of the plot and writing style bothered me a lot. Eventually, the comedic banter and the main characters started growing on me, plus some of my GR friends (alright, one friend) got into the story as I posted updates... so I kept reading until I figured I might as well finish it.

Basically I really liked the fairytale where the princess learns to save herself aspect of things, which makes me cautiously optimistic about the sequel.

ARC provided by Cross Cult via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and fair review.

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2023 Reading Challenge: book 6 of 20 written in German. show less

Ein sehr solider und interessanter Fantasy-Roman mit einem Haufen Schlachten, Fluchen und Abenteuern.