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Palace of Stone
Palace of Stone
by Shannon Hale
A New York Times Bestseller
In this second book in New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor-winning author Shannon Hale's Princess Academy series , Miri embarks on a brand new life in the city.
Coming down from the mountain to a new city life is a thrill to Miri. She and her princess academy friends have come to Asland to help the future princess Britta prepare for her wedding. There, Miri also has a chance to attend school—at the prestigious Queen's Castle.
But as Miri befriends sophisticated and exciting students, she also learns that they have some frightening plans for a revolution. Torn between loyalty to the princess and her new friends' ideas, between an old love and a new crush, and between her small mountain home and the bustling city, Miri looks to find her own way in this new place.
Don't miss any of these other books from New York Times bestselling author Shannon Hale:
The Princess Academy trilogy
Princess Academy
Princess Academy: Palace of Stone
Princess Academy: The Forgotten Sisters
The Books of Bayern
The Goose Girl
Enna Burning
River Secrets
Forest Born
Book of a Thousand Days
Dangerous
Graphic Novels
with Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale
Rapunzel's Revenge
Calamity Jack
For Adults
Austenland
Midnight in Austenland
The Actor and the Housewife
In this second book in New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor-winning author Shannon Hale's Princess Academy series , Miri embarks on a brand new life in the city.
Coming down from the mountain to a new city life is a thrill to Miri. She and her princess academy friends have come to Asland to help the future princess Britta prepare for her wedding. There, Miri also has a chance to attend school—at the prestigious Queen's Castle.
But as Miri befriends sophisticated and exciting students, she also learns that they have some frightening plans for a revolution. Torn between loyalty to the princess and her new friends' ideas, between an old love and a new crush, and between her small mountain home and the bustling city, Miri looks to find her own way in this new place.
Don't miss any of these other books from New York Times bestselling author Shannon Hale:
The Princess Academy trilogy
Princess Academy
Princess Academy: Palace of Stone
Princess Academy: The Forgotten Sisters
The Books of Bayern
The Goose Girl
Enna Burning
River Secrets
Forest Born
Book of a Thousand Days
Dangerous
Graphic Novels
with Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale
Rapunzel's Revenge
Calamity Jack
For Adults
Austenland
Midnight in Austenland
The Actor and the Housewife
A New York Times Bestseller
In this second book in New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor-winning author Shannon Hale's Princess Academy series , Miri embarks on a brand new life in the city.
Coming down from the mountain to a new city life is a thrill to Miri. She and her princess academy friends have come to Asland to help the future princess Britta prepare for her wedding. There, Miri also has a chance to attend school—at the prestigious Queen's Castle.
But as Miri befriends sophisticated and exciting students, she also learns that they have some frightening plans for a revolution. Torn between loyalty to the princess and her new friends' ideas, between an old love and a new crush, and between her small mountain home and the bustling city, Miri looks to find her own way in this new place.
Don't miss any of these other books from New York Times bestselling author Shannon Hale:
The Princess Academy trilogy
Princess Academy
Princess Academy: Palace of Stone
Princess Academy: The Forgotten Sisters
The Books of Bayern
The Goose Girl
Enna Burning
River Secrets
Forest Born
Book of a Thousand Days
Dangerous
Graphic Novels
with Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale
Rapunzel's Revenge
Calamity Jack
For Adults
Austenland
Midnight in Austenland
The Actor and the Housewife
In this second book in New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor-winning author Shannon Hale's Princess Academy series , Miri embarks on a brand new life in the city.
Coming down from the mountain to a new city life is a thrill to Miri. She and her princess academy friends have come to Asland to help the future princess Britta prepare for her wedding. There, Miri also has a chance to attend school—at the prestigious Queen's Castle.
But as Miri befriends sophisticated and exciting students, she also learns that they have some frightening plans for a revolution. Torn between loyalty to the princess and her new friends' ideas, between an old love and a new crush, and between her small mountain home and the bustling city, Miri looks to find her own way in this new place.
Don't miss any of these other books from New York Times bestselling author Shannon Hale:
The Princess Academy trilogy
Princess Academy
Princess Academy: Palace of Stone
Princess Academy: The Forgotten Sisters
The Books of Bayern
The Goose Girl
Enna Burning
River Secrets
Forest Born
Book of a Thousand Days
Dangerous
Graphic Novels
with Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale
Rapunzel's Revenge
Calamity Jack
For Adults
Austenland
Midnight in Austenland
The Actor and the Housewife
Reviews-
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happypug12 - This was even more beautifully written that the first. It keeps you clinging to every word, and you still have Miri, yet there is a slight difference in her that alerts you she is older. The romance is wonderfully illustrated and it seems almost real. Everything is described with such childlike wonder.
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August 8, 2005
Readers enchanted by Hale's Goose Girl
are in for an experience that's a bit more earthbound in this latest fantasy-cum-tribute to girl-power. Cheerful and witty 14-year-old Miri loves her life on Mount Eskel, home to the quarries filled with the most precious linder stone in the land, though she longs to be big and strong enough to do quarry work like her sister and father. But Miri experiences big changes when the king announces that the prince will choose a potential wife from among the village's eligible girls—and that said girls must attend a new Princess Academy in preparation. Princess training is not all it's cracked up to be for spunky Miri in the isolated school overseen by cruel Tutor Olana. But through education—and the realization that she has the common mountain power to communicate wordlessly via magical "quarry-speech"—Miri and the girls eventually gain confidence and knowledge that helps transform their village. Unfortunately, Hale's lighthearted premise and underlying romantic plot bog down in overlong passages about commerce and class, a surprise hostage situation and the specifics of "quarry-speech." The prince's final princess selection hastily and patly wraps things up. Ages 9-up. -
August 20, 2012
Readers of Hale's Newbery Honorâwinning 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 stoneâa homegrown talent called "quarry-speech"âhas 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 10âup. Agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary. -
August 1, 2012
Miri leaves her mountain of linder stone for another year of study and finds ethics and rhetoric to be powerful tools in the making of a revolution. This sequel to Princess Academy (2005) returns Miri and several of the girls from Mount Eskel to Asland to prepare for the wedding of Miri's best friend Britta to Prince Steffan. Times are dire: The people are destitute or starving, and the king, Steffan's father, seems indifferent and distant. Miri meets Timon, a classmate, and Lady Sisela, who speak strongly of the oppression of "the shoeless." The first half of the tale is a little slow and full of set-up, but the second half, when Miri takes action to prevent bloodshed, is powerful and deeply engaging. She uses not only rhetoric and ethics but the emotions of her people, which are held in the linder stone that comprises the palace, to hold the violence of the revolution in check. The politics echo the French Revolution (Hale notes this in the acknowledgments), but Miri's clear voice keeps the story hers and her people's. There's lovely texture to clothing and architectural descriptions and vivid warmth to Miri's friendships, her longing for home and her thirst to learn more and more. Not one but two boys help her find all the feelings kisses can engender. Miri's story comes to a satisfying end; readers who have been waiting since 2005 will find their patience well rewarded. (Fantasy. 10-14)COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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August 1, 2012
Gr 6 Up-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
Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- SLJ on Palace of Stone Palace of Stone . . . proves once again that with quick wit and brave words, one person really can change the world.
- Kirkus Reviews on Palace of Stone Powerful and deeply engaging. . . . Readers who have been waiting since 2005 will find their patience well rewarded.
- The Horn Book on Palace of Stone Hale's skill as a storyteller will charm her audience...nobody else has quite the same knack for seamlessly segueing between the folksy, intimate charm of an extended fairy tale and the larger canvas and more epic scope of high fantasy.
- Stephanie Perkins, author of Anna and the French Kiss Hale is a master of fantasy. . . . A gorgeously-written sequel.
- Stephenie Meyer, author of TWILIGHT Shannon Hale's books reignite my love of reading—that joy of having the time of my life with a great story.
- Holly Black Shannon Hale writes deft, lyrical wonderful fantasy
