Palace of Stone (Princess Academy #2)

In this follow-up to The Princess Academy (Bloomsbury, 2005), Miri and her fellow graduates are headed to Danland's capital city to attend the wedding of their friend Britta and Prince Steffan. Miri is also given a place at the university and wonders if she might stay in the city rather than return to her tiny village of Mt. Eskel.This indecision is complicated by her mixed feelings about Peder, her maybe-fiance from home, and Timon, the friendly scholar she meets in her classes. When delegates from the other provinces stage an insulting protest to the king, Miri learns that the Eskelites are not the only ones who have been abused by the monarchy, and that the "shoeless" poor are close to rebellion. She is enlisted to befriend the rebels and quickly becomes sympathetic to their side. When it turns out her new friends have an agenda of their own, she realizes that she has put Britta's life in danger. The rebellion plotline acts as a primer on why change and social improvement are so difficult, and how resorting to violence can backfire. Miri may be just a young woman from Mt. Eskel, but in Palace of Stone she proves once again that with quick wits and brave words, one person really can change the world.—Eliza Langhans, Hatfield Public Library, MA

Readers of Hale's Newbery Honor-winning Princess Academy (2005) will welcome this reunion with Miri and her schoolmates, as they descend Mount Eskel to help Britta prepare for her wedding to Prince Steffan. But while the palace in the capital city of Asland is as luxurious as their imaginations conjured, the working classes are hungry and tired of footing the royal family's bill. Revolution is in the air, and it sweeps Miri, now enrolled at the university, into its wake. Miri is torn in several ways: between two boys, between the educational advantages Asland offers and her home in the mountains, and between empathy for the "shoeless" and loyalty to Britta, who has become the focus of the revolutionaries' wrath. Hale handles these threads ably, although a scene in which the Eskelites stop a villain by using their ability to communicate through stone--a homegrown talent called "quarry-speech"--has a whiff of comic-book superhero that feels out of place. Still, this is a fine follow-up to a novel that already felt complete. Ages 10-up. Agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary. (Sept.)