It's a shame that these last 2 installments never lived up to the strength of the first book; I think Princess Academy would have been so much better as a standalone. The Forgotten Sisters was a mild improvement from Palace of Stone, only because I liked the personalities and background of the three sisters. The worldbuilding is still sloppy here, the "war" is shoehorned in as a plot device, various other plot twists were thrown in without any real causality, and all the loose threads were wrapped up a bit too neatly at the end. Basically the same flaws as the second book. (For instance: An eight-year-old king, while behaving exactly his age, somehow gets a bunch of violent, power-hungry old men to end a war by just telling them so? A king who has enjoyed decades of selfishness and stubbornness with regards to his kingdom suddenly has a change of heart when a fourteen-year-old girl from a forgotten province throws a righteous tantrum at him? Alrighty then...) I guess all that's to say I've probably outgrown the simplistic fantasy I used to enjoy as a teenager, because real life is harsh and I've begun to expect a lot more realism from the fantasy stories I read. Nonetheless, I'm glad to have finally finished this series, even if it didn't end the way I wanted it to. ( )

3.5 stars

In this, the 3rd (and final) book in the Princess Academy series, Miri is about to head home to the mountain with her boyfriend Peder, but she is called back to see the King and Queen at the last minute. They have “asked” her to travel to a swampy area in the kingdom where the king’s three girl cousins live; she is requested to be a tutor to train them to become princesses. The King plans to offer one of the three to a neighbouring monarch in order to prevent a war.

I enjoyed this. Of course, the sisters were nothing like princesses and it took a while to convince them to try (though there were extenuating factors, like not having time to do any lessons), so it was somewhat amusing at first, too. There was a section in the middle that slowed down a bit, but when a war started, anyway, it picked up again. I feel like it was a nice wrap-up to the series. ( )

Shannon Hale writes a great story and this did not disappoint. A great read that I will definitely be recommending. ( )

I had fun with this series. I recommend. ( )

The long peace between Stora and Dylan was in crisis and the king of Dylan decided to build an unbreakable alliance through political marriage to improve the relationship between two states. The three royal cousins living in Alva were the first choices of the political marriage. The three girls living in Alva had no idea about social etiquettes. The king ordered Miri studying in Queen Castle to teach them. When Miri came to Alva, she saw three ragged royal cousins living in poverty and she had more and more doubts; later, Alva was occupied by Stora. ( )