Nobody's Princess by Esther Friesner

An adventure at Barnes and Noble with some awesome friends of mine led me to getting this book...

Story:

Helen is the princess of Sparta. Her future is laid out before her with every fashionable, glamorous detail in order. She will be marry, become queen, rule the city of Sparta with her perfect new husband and have a daughter who will take her place one day. Helen will spend her days making clothing, weaving and doing embroidery with her sister, Clytemnestra, forever sheltered from the things her brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, get to do. And that, well... that's just not good enough for Helen. At the age of seven she decides that she wants to learn how to fight because she's sick of getting everything just because she's "beautiful." After being told by her brother that he'll teach her as soon as she can catch him (and failing miserably to do so as he raced down the hall away from her) she begins running whenever she has the chance. Three years later, she follows her brothers to their lesson with high hopes of learning some of their skills for herself. Two years later it is announced that Clytemnestra will be leaving the kingdom to go marry a prince in one of the neighboring cities. Polydeuces, Castor, a group of guards and, after some smooth talking on her part, Helen accompany her and thus begins the journey of a lifetime. Doing everything from hunting a rabid boar to falling backwards off of a horse to befriending people she never thought she would even talk to, Helen gets a taste of the addicting flavor of freedom.

"'...you're beauty will make Zeus himself fall in love with you and put your image up there as well, for us ordinary men to see and envy.'

'I can think of better reasons to end up among the stars,' I said, smiling."

So I had my expectations set pretty dang high when I began this book, I had gotten many recommendations and such for it, and I have to say... it failed to meet them. It had promise when it started out but the plot line was so repetitive that I felt like I could recite the main theme backwards and forwards by the time I was finished. Though it wasn't as gripping as I'd hoped I have to admit that the descriptions were amazing and it was very easy to picture everything the author was describing. So, if you can put up with repetition and like Greek mythology I would recommend this book, but otherwise I'm going to have to give an "eh" kind of rating. I would say it was about a 2.5-3 out of 5.

thanks for reading,

zibz