Audio Book Review: Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Title: Princess Academy
Author: Shannon Hale
Details: audio
Published: Nov. 15th, 2007 by Full Cast Audio (first published Jan. 2005)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Source: Library


Description:

Miri lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have quarried stone and lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king's priests have divined her small village the home of the future princess. In a year's time, the prince himself will come and choose his bride from among the girls of the village. The king's ministers set up an academy on the mountain, and every teenage girl must attend and learn how to become a princess.Miri soon finds herself confronted with a harsh academy mistress, bitter competition among the girls, and her own conflicting desires to be chosen and win the heart of her childhood best friend. But when bandits seek out the academy to kidnap the future princess, Miri must rally the girls together and use a power unique to the mountain dwellers to save herself and her classmates.

This is my first audio book review, I think.  So please bear with me.  

The audio was in full cast which I thought was great.  It was nice having all the different voices and I found it easy to distinguish between them.  I do think Miri sounded a bit young.  But maybe it's just me because she is young.  I just felt like she was closer to 12 rather then 14 and 15 (I'm not certain I'm remembering her age, but I'm fairly certain it was 14 and 15).  

The story was good.  I think if I was reading it I would have been a little bored in the beginning.  And later I felt like the story should be almost over and then discovered there were 2 more CD's to go!  So it kind of threw me when they made the story go on with another subplot and prolonging the main plot.  The subplot for that portion actually was quite good though and definitely added a good bit of tension to the story.  

This book has a touch of magic.  And I really liked how it worked and how it ended up being so useful to them.  Once the story was going I was able to figure out how it would probably play out but it didn't take away from the story for me.  

What was the true magic in this story was Shannon Hales use of words.  She's got to be the queen of analogies.  It was just gorgeous the way she weaved it all together.  Seriously beautiful!  

 I'll definitely be checking out more of her books!  I have a feeling she could end up being a new favorite!

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