Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

I first heard about Two Moon Princess a few years ago and loved the hardcover illustrated artwork. It made me think of other novel series with strong female main characters overcoming an obstacle in their path (The Alanna books by Tamora Pierce or Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale) and I wanted to read it. It was not however at my local library (not a surprise at all) or my local bookstores. And it was out of print on Amazon.

The new cover, depicting Princess Andrea looking off into the sunset with the wind blowing gives a good impression as well. The bright colors of her dress imply her spanish heritage while the wistful look on the model's face goes a long way to promoting Andrea's own problems. It does not scream 'fantasy' to me, the way the original cover did with Andrea dressed in her archery clothing staring at a far off kingdom, but it is still visually appealing.

The novel itself was at its best when Andrea bridged the gap between her world (a medieval Spanish Kingdom) and our world (modern day California). She stumbled into our time and once here didn't see a better world necessarily, but one where she was freer to be herself. Restricted in hers because she is a Princess and has to learn to be a lady (when she's more of a tomboy and wants to learn to be useful), Andrea learns to listen to her heart in ours.

Carmen is careful to illustrate that neither world is perfect--there is a valid reasoning behind keeping the doorway between closed off after all. She also points out that sometimes who you are and want to be needs to compromise with who you need to be. This is Andrea's coming of age story before anything else. The first pangs of love, betrayal and the knowledge that no one person is infallible (or completely flawed) cut deeply.

Though Andrea herself is well realized and fleshed out, the other characters often felt shallow by comparison. I didn't quite buy the 11th hour romance that sprang up (to be fair it was hinted at throughout, but there were complications so it felt like it only was taken seriously near the end) and some of Andrea's decisions left me feeling a bit confused. Though it may have been more that the other characters--important people in her life--seemed to just...accept things happening.

There is a sequel in the works, The King in the Stone, but I won't this book by discussing the snippet Carmen has on her webpage here. I do wonder who the person narrating that snippet is given the ending of this book.… (més)

What breaks my heart about this book is that I went into it really wanting to fall in love with. When I read the synopsis and saw that it contained time travel, fantasy elements, and even some coming of age difficulty, I really thought that this would be something I loved. Unfortunately, Two Moon Princess just didn't hold my attention the way I'd hoped.

First of all I find it necessary to open with a commendation. Despite everything else, I applaud Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban's world building abilities. The medieval world that Andrea is growing up in is truly beautiful. The descriptive language that is used to share the beauty of her lands, and the wild openness around her is like a painting. It's almost as though I found myself transported there. Even when she ends up in modern-day California, you can almost see her surroundings. It's pretty amazing.

Sadly, I wasn't able to fall in love with any of the characters, and anyone who has been reading my blog for any amount of time knows I'm a character girl. Andrea and her sisters were really tough to like. What really bothered me though was Andrea's constant changing of attitude. At first she is the princess who'd rather be a squire, and then she morphs into something entirely different and not quite herself. On top of that her immature attitude was slightly off-putting, especially when things she would say just didn't fit with what I thought her character was. In terms of supporting characters, I didn't feel that I was able to get to know them as much as I would have liked. Even John, who ends up as the apple of Andrea's eye, isn't that fleshed out as a character. It was wholly frustrating to me.

Plot wise, the story is solid! It does jump a bit, especially when Andrea travels from one world to another, but overall it is interesting. The second half of the story really held my attention much more than the rest, but of course there was a war brewing and scandal. I'm drawn to that sort of thing, I shan't lie! This is another aspect that kept me reading on.

Two Moon Princess is classified as a Middle Grade novel, but I'm not sure that's the best place for it to fit. The beginning of the story, in an effort to build up the world setting, is very slow. Perhaps readers who are drawn in by historical fiction might find something to love! However I know that many of the younger aged children I work with wouldn't be able to make it through the first few pages. As I said, it truly saddens me. I loved the setting and the plot, I only wish I could have fallen in love with the characters more. I'd definitely recommend that lovers of historical fiction, and of fantasy, give this a try. You might love it.… (més)

I'm sorry to say that I was very disappointed in this book. The biggest problem is Princess Andrea herself. She's immature, self-absorbed, impulsive, and generally out of control. Initially this seems plausible for her age, since we're told that she's fourteen. However, it turns out that the year in her world is longer than ours, and in our years, she's seventeen. This does make the discussion of her admirers or lack thereof considerably less creepy, but even though seventeen-year-olds still have a fair bit of maturing to do, most of them are a great deal more mature than Andrea.

Andrea is the youngest of the four daughters of a king, Don Andres, and his queen Jimena. She's also the misfit, the tomboy, who wants to be a knight instead of a court lady. She's been indulged so far, training with the pages hoping to become squires to her father's knights, but with her fourteenth birthday, she is required to put away childish things and learn to be a lady. Unfortunately, she has so far failed to learn even some of the basics of court protocol, and already without any friends amongst the court ladies except the next-youngest princess, Margarida, she manages to actively offend people without intending to. She hopes for some support from her uncle, Tio Ramiro, her mother's brother, but even he thinks it's time for her to grow up. We do learn the interesting detail that no one really knows where Ramiro's castle is--and this of course is the key to much of the story.

Ramiro and his sister Queen Jimena are not native to Andrea's world, and when she tries to run away, Andrea winds up accidentally finding the portal to Ramiro's (and our) world on the night of a full moon, when it is active. She becomes an accidental visitor in her uncle's world, an unexpected burden and challenge to Ramiro (or, as we learn, Raymond Miller), and his daughter Kelsey.

The background on this world-hopping is that there are a small number of active gates between the two worlds. We are given no clue as to how they work, not even whether the principle behind them is magical or technological. Centuries ago, when the Muslims were conquering what we now know as Spain, a Spaniard King, Roderic, and his followers were defeated, and fleeing, and were directed to a gate that took them to the world of the Xaren-Ras. This new world has (as already mentioned), a longer year than ours, and also two moons each of which is larger than our one moon, and different stars in the sky, patterns that are visibly different to anyone who ever looks up at the sky. So this doesn't seem to be an alternate time line version of Earth, but a completely different, if equally habitable, world.

Except that it had a native population that the Spanish refugees were able to intermarry with.

Now, I concede that many people don't care about that kind of inconsistency. What's less excusable, are the number of stupid decisions Andrea makes. She's a very intelligent (if immature) young lady who quickly learns English and the basics of living in our world and becoming, with the help of her uncle who is a professor at UC Davis, a college student. In her own world, though, she consistently makes stupid decisions, misinterprets other people's words in unlikely ways, and thinks everything is all about her. When Don Julian, in the midst of a fever delirium, blurts out a promise to his father to avenge his death, Andrea actually believes that he's lied to her, her mother, and Raymond/Ramiro about the agreement they've reached to stop the war that's about to get lots of men killed. It doesn't occur to her that it's far more likely that he's simply reliving in his fever the long-ago moment when he did plan to avenge his father's death and reclaim the lands lost in that conflict--something he has since done. She sees Don Julian talking to her sister Margarida, and despite her sister having told her quite recently how much in love she is with his brother Don Alphonse, she assumes Margarida and Julian are falling for each other, and not talking about Alphonse. This is, of course, after she's had a very difficult time grasping the fact that Julian is not in love with her sister Rosa, but had proposed to her because it was a suitable alliance, and declared war when the betrothal was broken off because it was a huge insult and also eliminated the basis for a peace agreement with her father's kingdom.

In the end, this all comes to a reasonably satisfactory conclusion, and Andrea even becomes more mature and less annoying in the last few pages, but it's a rough slog getting there.

Not recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

See more of my reviews at my blog, Lis Carey's Library… (més)