Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I didn’t realize until I started it that The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre is a prequel to The Two Princesses of Bamarre, not a sequel, but it most certainly is; Drualt is a boy of 9 instead of a legend.  I’m not sure which one I’d choose to read first if I could do it over again, but they definitely enrich each other.  Anyway.  I’m feeling a list sort of review tonight–I’m not sure why–so here goes:

1.  There are echoes of McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown here; Aerin and Perry share the burden of championing their people and straddling two worlds.
2.  There are also echoes of Moses, the Jewish ‘Prince of Egypt’, and the Israelites, who were accustomed to slavery and struggled with the “it gets worse before it gets better” aspect of rebellion.
3.  The Beneficences feel very like the Nuremberg Laws.
4.  The Rapunzel element is–odd.  The stolen child element works, although Lady Klausine’s character dichotomies stretch believability, but the hair element?  It just feels incongruous.
5.  Lost Kingdom is seriously political.  Remember Princess Academy:  Palace of Stone?  Political like that, except that Hale’s politics had more of an Imperial Russia feel.
6.  In both Bamarre books, Gail Carson Levine explores the concepts of heroism versus cowardice.  I might have liked an exploration of honor in Lost Kingdom, but her way made for a tighter story.
7.  Maybe there’s a faint Tolkien element?  But probably just in the ‘everyone who writes fantasy is influenced by Tolkien’ kind of way.

Okay, I’m done listing.  This was not quite the book I was expecting, but I was moved by it all the same.  Fans of Levine, of strong female characters, of complicated sister relationships, and possibly of Robin McKinley (but then, who isn’t a fan of Robin McKinley????) shouldn’t miss this one.