The Princess Will Save You

by Sarah Henning

July 7, 2020 · Tor Teen

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Content warning: Torture of a main character.

I’m pretty sure that if I start by saying ‘genderswapped Princess Bride where the Princess rescues the stable boy’, about half of you won’t read any further in this review because you will be too busy one-clicking the book. Certainly, that was my reaction when I saw this title appear on NetGalley.

And if genderswapped Princess Bride is what you are looking for in a book, you will not be disappointed. The Princess Will Save You has, as William Goldman puts it, “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes. Spiders… Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”

No really, it has all of those things. It also hits almost every dramatic beat from The Princess Bride, while being entirely its own story. And Princess Amarande is pretty badass.

The story begins with the death of Princess Amarande’s father, possibly by accident, but more likely by poison, and the revelation that the law of the land does not permit Amarande to rule alone, but instead requires her to marry in order to inherit the throne. The neighbouring kingdoms (perhaps vassal-kingdoms is a more accurate description) all have some very strong ideas about who Amarande should marry; Amarande herself wants to change the law so that she can rule alone, but besides that, she definitely doesn’t want to marry until she has established that any prospective husband wasn’t the person who killed her father. Amarande’s councillors are inclined to leave her out of the decision-making. She is only sixteen and a girl, after all – what could she possibly have to contribute to the conversation? And so when Amaranda publicly declares that she will not marry unless she consents to it, the country is brought perilously close to war.

(A classic case, incidentally, of giving someone insufficient information and then blaming them for making poor decisions based on that information, but I digress).

And then Luca, the stableboy and Amarande’s best friend and true love (though neither of them have precisely admitted this to themselves yet) is kidnapped by pirates and the ransom note requires Amarande to marry Prince Renard or never see Luca again.

And so Amarande packs her saddlebags and heads out into the Torrent to rescue him.

There is a lot to love about this book. Amarande is a fantastic character – she has been raised to be a warrior, and she is very, very, good at fighting, and she has some training in politics, but she is also a fairly straightforward person who is surrounded by people with very twisty motives indeed, and she just doesn’t have the training or experience to see through them. She is intelligent and quick thinking and spots about half to two thirds of what people are up to, but she isn’t quite at the level of the professionals yet – she is a prodigy at fighting, but not a prodigy at absolutely everything else, and this makes her brilliance in that area more believable. I liked that she is impulsive, but also logical and has a strong sense of duty to her country – while her pursuit of Luca is personal, she also knows that in leaving Koldo in charge, her country is in good hands. She is also aware that by running away she does, in fact, buy more time for her country – nobody is going to start a war until they know who the princess marries, and if the princess isn’t there to marry, well. Her plan is not absolutely unassailable – Prince Renard immediately finds and exploits one flaw – but it isn’t entirely foolish, either.

I also liked that while Amarande really is an excellent fighter, she nearly loses her first real fight because she has never killed anyone before, or, indeed, fought anyone who was seriously trying to injure her, and so she hesitates at a crucial moment. In later battles, she fares better, but it makes sense that someone who has training but not experience would hesitate in this context. Luca has a similar experience when he is kidnapped – I love the line: ‘He’d only been trained to fight a girl who didn’t want to hurt him’. It’s not that he can’t fight when there is need – but, like Amarande, he’s never been in a situation where there was a need before, and like her, he is caught unprepared.

Speaking of Luca, he really is a total sweetheart – a gentle, kind person, who has compassion even for his captors and does his best to befriend them (partly, certainly, from self-interest, but also partly because all people deserve respect). Luca doesn’t want to hurt anyone if he can help it, or stand in the way of Amarande’s duty to her country – he is in no way a weak character, but he is not, by nature, a revolutionary – Amarande is the fierce one in this relationship. Luca is just quietly, steadfastly, in love with Amarande, and knows that they can never marry, and that’s OK, he’s just happy if he can be near her.

Luca, as a stableboy, also has an awareness of power and privilege that Amarande lacks. He is very aware of his place in the world in a way that Amarande isn’t quite – or rather, that she takes for granted.

“I will always be at your side… unless I’m dragged away kicking and screaming by a band of kidnappers.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. He laughed a little, too, and then, when it was quiet, reached across the short distance and let his hand graze her face. […]

“May I kiss you, Ama?”

The princess flashed a surprised smile. “Of course. I kissed you.”

Luca was quiet for a moment. “I’m in a position that I must ask.”

Amarande hadn’t asked him when she’d kissed him after the rescue. She’d just done it. Suddenly it was slightly horrifying to her that she hadn’t thought to ask him at all. Power dynamics, emotions, a mutual understanding… she wasn’t sure what drove her to do it or if any of those things made it worse or generally okay.

Luca’s hand swept down her chin. “Ama, I wanted you to kiss me. But I never could have done it first.”

“My answer to you will always be yes.” She swallowed the lump forming in her throat—oh, Luca. “I’m so sorry I didn’t think to ask before.”

(Yes, this is a kissing book.)

I liked Amarande and Luca’s relationship a lot. It’s very sweet and loving and undramatic. They have clearly loved each other for years as friends and this has slowly grown into a steadfast romantic love and nothing changes about that during the book except that they acknowledge it. While their relationship is central to the novel in that it is the motivating factor for everything that happens, this isn’t a novel about their relationship – if this were a straightforward romance without the adventure plot, it would be rather dull. But as it is, in a book with SO MUCH happening ALL THE TIME, their relationship becomes an oasis of sweetness and calm and kindness in the middle of all the drama, and I just sighed in happy relief any time they got to be together because it was just so nice.

The secondary characters in this book are also great, particularly the women, who all have their own, often hidden, agendas, which are focused and narrowed and sometimes warped by the very patriarchal ways in which power is inherited and owned in this world. Ula the pirate, for example, is another gifted swordswoman, and has a goal beyond her own personal benefit – to overthrow the Warlord of the Torrent in favour of the rightful heir, if such can be found, or of the people, if no heir exists. General Koldo, Amarande’s father’s right hand woman and Amarande’s surrogate mother (and now Regent) plays her cards close to her chest but is clearly both extremely competent and has certain priorities that are hidden even from Amarande. Renard’s mother, Inès, has plans which are both ruthless and not entirely unsympathetic, especially when you consider what her sons are like. And Amarande’s own mother, the Runaway Queen, may have had reasons for leaving beyond thwarted love (as well as a career beyond the Ardenian court).

The villains of the piece, I’m less sure about. Prince Renard and his younger brother, Prince Taillefer, do start off having reasonably complex motivations and personalities (and are the source of some of the twistier politics in this story), but as the story progresses, I felt that they descended into caricatures of villains from a melodrama. On the one hand, this descent echoes that of Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride, but I found the story more interesting when the villains were a bit less moustache-twirly. In particular, I felt that the torture scene was unnecessary – yes, it matched a beat from The Princess Bride, but for me, it didn’t advance the plot or illuminate character and I could have done very well without it.

The politics almost deserve a review of their own, and I’m not sure whether I can even begin to untangle them without spoiling the story beyond repair. Suffice it to say that I thought they were clever and well-realised – I liked the way all the different agendas made for these very temporary alliances to achieve a specific shared goal before people became enemies again. There was some really clever work done here.

One thing I do want to mention, in the most non-spoilerish way possible, is the ending. I had assumed, for various reasons, that The Princess Will Save You would be a standalone novel…

If you are someone who wants your stories neatly finished and cliff-hanger free, this might frustrate you.

Overall, this was a lot of fun, and really was exactly what it said on the box – a Princess Bride retelling where the Princess is the badass warrior and the stableboy her gentle-hearted sidekick. I do think it has its flaws, but I enjoyed it a lot, and I suspect a true Princess Bride aficionado would love it. A minus from me, and I’m looking forward to the sequel.