Shannon Hale delves more deeply into her beloved characters in this sequel to the Newbery Honor book Princess Academy, which takes Miri to the big city and plants her right in the middle of a political morass.
Danland is being bankrupted by the king's demands for increasingly extravagant tributes, there's a revolution brewing, and the revolution wants Mount Eskel on their side. The Princess Academy graduates have been invited to travel to Asland, the capital city, and stay for a year. And while not all of them will go, Miri and Peder jump at the chance. But when they arrive, Miri is immediately drawn into a dangerous situation. Britta barely has time with the other Academy girls because of her royal duties and impending wedding to Prince Steffan, and Katar, the Mount Eskel delegate, asks Miri to find out more about the rebels plotting against the king. As she tries to figure out whom she can trust, Miri also struggles to figure out who she is--a mountain girl, a city scholar or something else entirely.
While Princess Academy was primarily an adventurous coming-of-age story, Palace of Stone is far more political. Miri has to learn how court etiquette works in practice, not just in theory, and navigate her way through shifting allegiances, widespread unrest, philosophical quandaries and emotional uncertainties. There is certainly derring-do (some truly epic derring-do, in fact), but there's also a deep thoughtfulness and an intellectual edge to Palace of Stone that add layers to the characters we already love. --Jenn Northington, events manager at WORD bookstore