3/5

For fans of: princess stories, hero’s journey, talking animal sidekicks, fairy-tales, Italian operas, middle school fantasy

Synopsis: Inspired by Swan Lake, Luna a twice-cursed princess, is forced into isolation in an underground lake. There, for two centuries, she is alone sacrificing her freedom for the safety of the world. In a not-too-distant kingdom, Piero is the long-suffering prince forced into an unhappy engagement. When circumstances seemly bring these two together, along with Luna’s faithful crow Gianluca, they undertake a journey that changes their lives forever.

Review: Full disclosure, I was given a copy of the book from the author in exchange for an honest review. The story starts off strong, with an action-packed prologue that kicks off the mythos which will haunt Luna throughout the story. Overall, I found the story to be very cute, a Disney-esque fairytale with influence from Italian opera storytelling. The main characters are incredibly innocent with corny-but-cute dialogue especially between each other. Giancarlo was exceptionally sweet as the animal sidekick with incredible powers of his own as well as a tactician counterstricking the main villain in unexpected ways. Piero’s journey and character arc beginning as the obedient, if broken, prince who just wants to paint in peace was one of the highlights of the story. I found his part of the story more well-rounded than Luna’s.

Some areas that could be improved upon were the world building, Luna’s backstory, and fleshing out the characters a bit more. First, I was actually hoping to have more established and explained rules of magic in this world rather than Luna suddenly remembering bits and pieces when it was convenient, possibly in chapter openers or between chapters as if they were part of a magical book or flashbacks with her mentor. Second, illustrating the entire backstory of Luna and Jacopo’s relationship, Luna’s mentorship in her abilities, and more of Jacopo’s side of the story would have been a really interesting way to better illustrate the overarching theme of how gaining power for the sake of doing good can still corrupt. Lastly, much of the changes within the characters journeys were more told rather than shown. The side characters also felt stiff and one-dimensional, with the villagers just being “good” and the royal families being “bad”.

Overall, this story has a lot of potential as a strong middle-school level fairytale with themes of overcoming circumstances, the way power can corrupt good people, and being true to yourself.