By Kassandra Lynn
Demon Kingdom Fairy Tales #1
Published on December 21, 2015
162 PagesFantasy, Young Adult
This book was provided to me from Xpresso Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. I swear on my bookshelf that this has not affected my opinion of the book.
Adriana's coronation day did not go exactly as planned. She is not even supposed to be the Demon King yet. But in the absence of both her father and her brother, she is forced to step up to the throne and take charge of the Demon Kingdom.
But before Adriana even has a chance to feel the crown on her head, she is summoned to a fledgling mage who has no idea the power that he just summoned. Now instead of wearing her crown and controlling the power of the Demon Kingdom, Adriana is forced to obey the will of a weakly mage who cannot even light a candle by himself.
If Adriana wants to keep her kingdom safe, she has to hide her identity from the mortals who trapped her and get back to her leaderless kingdom before it falls apart.
Review
Sometimes size does matter when it comes to books. Some books are too long and long-winded to capture by attention (The Secret History by Donna Tartt) or they are too short and lacking in detail for me to fully appreciate the story. Demon Princess falls short of my standard for world-building and character development.
For me, world-building and character development are two of the most important aspects of fantasy novels. Demon Princess struck out with me because, due to its short length, neither of those aspects were fully elaborated.
I really wish that I knew more about everything in this book. The story and the characters were interesting, but I finished the book and still felt as if I knew nothing about them.
The history of the world and the inner workings of the characters were mostly thrown aside for the romance. I would say that a good 3/4 of the book was romance and all of the world-building and fantasy was shoved into 1/4 of the book. Normally, I like these ratios to be flipped.
There were also long periods of time that were completely skipped over in the novel. This is to be expected since it is so short, but instead of enhancing the story, this time gap further disconnected me from the characters and the plot. Skipping large amounts of time is one of my pet peeves in novels. Time gaps always make me feel as if I missed something and leave me wondering what happened during the time without getting any answers.
Due to the unique nature of fantasy novels, I believe that the longer they are, the better. Now, this is not a steadfast rule, but the more detail and length that is put into the world-building and descriptions, there is a better chance that a fantasy book will impress me.
When I read the synopsis of this book, I did not expect romance to be the main focus. I wanted the culture and history of the new world that I was thrown into and some memorable characters for me to hate or love. In the end, I was just indifferent to everything since I did not know enough to really develop an opinion about most of the characters and the world.
The inklings of ideas that were introduced in this book were interesting, which I will give it credit for. There were some unique concepts in Demon Princess that I have not encountered in other YA fantasy books. This is rather hard to accomplish due to the massive amount of books that I read, especially fantasy novels. If those concepts were expanded and used more throughout the novel, my final rating would have been much higher.
Even though correlation does not always result in causation, I believe that more detail, events, and length in Demon Princess would have greatly improved the novel.
Recommendations
I would not recommend Demon Princess if you are a fan of description-heavy and detailed fantasy novels.
Do you like detailed fantasy novels? Do you think that longer books are generally better than shorter books? How do you feel about time gaps in novels?
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