A review by lesserjoke
Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale

4.0

Much like the first book, this Princess Academy sequel seems like a great title for readers transitioning between the middle-grade and young adult publishing categories. It's a tough act to balance the atmosphere of class consciousness and fermenting revolution against a lighter preteen tone, but overall author Shannon Hale manages it quite nicely. I also like how she takes a love triangle that could easily feel perfunctory and instead illustrates the different choices more broadly facing her heroine, which is a great use of that genre trope for this sort of coming-of-age story. I'm not sure if the next novel is intended to close out the series as a trilogy or if Hale will go on to publish further volumes, but I'm looking forward to reading on and finding out.