This was such a cute read! In the tongue-in-cheek narrative voice, it reminded me a little of “The Princess Bride.” The narrator is a character in the story, too, so periodically he will start to go off on some philosophical rambling or moralizing, which made the story much more unique and engaging.
That aside, the story follows Tress of course, and the narrator goes out of his way to tell us that she is not at all similar to typical storybook heroines in the sense that she had no interest in adventure whatsoever. She is very practical, content with simple pleasures (like collecting tea cups), and she is of low birth. She falls in love with Charlie, the gardener, or so she thinks… and he has a problem with verbal diarrhea, never quite knowing when to stop talking or when his stories have bored his listeners. But Tress loves him, and finds his stories endearing. He falls for her too, of course… and then eventually she realizes that he is royalty, and his father insists on marrying him off to a princess.
I expected at this point that romance would be a big part of the story, but really this was just the setup. Charlie (hilariously) writes Tress about how he’s purposely put off, offended, or disgusted every potential match, holding out for her… but then he goes missing. Tress hears about the sorcerer who holds him captive, in the midst of several notoriously treacherous seas, and decides that despite the fact that she has no experience as a sailor or an adventurer of any kind, despite the fact that all she’s ever wanted is to stay home and never have any adventures whatsoever, she sets off to try to rescue him.
This might seem like a reverse damsel in distress story (with a pathetic male incapable of doing anything except be rescued by a badass female), but it really isn’t. Tress succeeds by dumb luck and goodness much of the time, and by winning the allegiance of those around her. Charlie doesn’t at all turn out to be what you expect, either. The fantastical obstacles are quite creative–I’ve never read anything like it before. And the ending is satisfying. I only knocked off the last half star because it seemed to lack a certain indescribable something that hooked me and kept me reading… not sure what it is exactly, but while I enjoyed the story, it wasn’t like I couldn’t put it down. I suppose that might have been a byproduct of the narrative distance: since the narrator himself was such a character, I was maybe less engaged with Tress herself than I might have been otherwise.
My rating: ****1/2
Language: none that I recall
Violence: fantasy only
Sexual content: none
Political content: none
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