The Last Princess by Galaxy Craze Book Review

Preface:

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to apologize for being MIA at the end of last week and over the weekend. One of my cats passed away unexpectedly at the age of four for no visible reason. I was kind of in shock mode and then mopey the rest of the time. I didn’t want my mood to affect my reviews or posts so I stepped back for a few days. Now I’m healing and looking forward to jumping back into everything! So let’s move on to the review 😉

A series of natural disasters has decimated the earth. Cut off from the rest of the world, England is a dark place. The sun rarely shines, food is scarce, and groups of criminals roam the woods, searching for prey. The people are growing restless. When a ruthless revolutionary sets out to overthrow the crown, he makes the royal family his first target. Blood is shed in Buckingham Palace, and only sixteen-year old Princess Eliza manages to escape. Determined to kill the man who destroyed her family, Eliza joins the enemy forces in disguise. She has nothing left to live for but revenge, until she meets someone who helps her remember how to hope-and love-once more. Now she must risk everything to ensure that she does not become... The Last Princess.

The Review 

I have to be honest. I was really drawn to this book because of the cover. I remember walking the shelves in Barnes and Noble, turning around and seeing it there facing out. I instantly picked it up and read the back cover. I’m just getting into the dystopain genre, so I was interested in the novel right away. I decided to take a chance on the story and it took me on an unexpected journey.

The novel takes place in England after a calamity called the Seventeen Days and follows the story of Princess Eliza. Eliza becomes the sole survivor of the current royal family due to a menacing revolutionary, Cornelius Hollister. Hollister has taken up the cause of overthrowing the crown to gain power over England. His first target of course was the royal family and only Eliza managed to escape. She isn’t your typical princess. Eliza’s not only trying to survive, but she wants revenge. Her plan? To get as close to the enemy as possible and hopefully get her chance to kill him. So Eliza enlists in his revolutionary army. This army is merciless and ruthless. Her time training isn’t a walk in the park and she makes a few enemies along the way. But Eliza also encounters someone willing to aide her even if it puts him in danger. But can Eliza trust him? She has forgotten how to hope and to love, but he might be the one to remind her. The story ends in some predictability and some surprise, but its a quick action packed read.

What I have to be clear with is that this isn’t always a lighthearted read. It has a good amount of dark in it. That’s one of the things I really liked about the story. I wasn’t expecting the storyline to get that dark. Craze does a good job of conveying Eliza’s loss of positivity and sole focus of revenge. Her personality and actions were well thought out and I didn’t find much wrong with her character. Craze really put Eliza through a lot of  and had her bouncing back and forth throughout the plot.

What I wished Craze put more effort into was the world building. This is a dystopian novel and while it seemed to have every element that falls under this genre, it left a lot of questioning. Readers never fully understand The Seventeen Days and the motives behind the main villain Hollister. Even the love interest isn’t fully developed.

Although there were a lot of questions, there was also a lot of action. The action really helped the plot move fast and I finished this novel a lot quicker then most. Sometimes, the plot got confusing with the amount of action taking place (again the whole questioning thing being developed), but I liked the amount of action in this particular story.

I did enjoy reading this novel (even with the questioning). I saw a few of the ending results ahead of time, but predictability also depends on the reader’s ability to see foreshadowing or the amount of novels they’ve read. I think the biggest disappointment I had with the novel was the memorability of the story. After a day or so of reading the novel, I forgot most of the plot. I had to go back an skim most of it for this review. Forgetting main plot points of a novel isn’t something I typically do, so this was a clear sign for me about how much the story stuck with me.

Overall, I think this novel had a lot of potential to be really great. If Craze spent just a little more time on building up the dystopian world and revealing some more about the secondary characters, this novel would have been a real winner. I would still recommend this novel, if you’re looking for an action-packed quick read. It wasn’t a favorite of mine and I will most likely not reread it, but I encourage you to try it out for yourself.

The Details

Publisher: Poppy (Hachette)
Price: $8.99
Pages: 293
Place: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound 

My Final Grade:

My Grade: C
Amazon Rating: 4.0/5 stars (66 reviewers)

As always,

Happy Reading!

xo,

NicoleLynn