Stars: ★★★★/5
For Princess Alyrra, choice is a luxury she's never had ... until she's betrayed.
Princess Alyrra has never enjoyed the security or power of her rank. Between her family's cruelty and the court's contempt, she has spent her life in the shadows. Forced to marry a powerful foreign prince, Alyrra embarks on a journey to meet her betrothed with little hope for a better future.
But powerful men have powerful enemies--and now, so does Alyrra. Betrayed during a magical attack, her identity is switched with another woman's, giving Alyrra the first choice she's ever had: to start a new life for herself or fight for a prince she's never met. But Alyrra soon finds that Prince Kestrin is not at all what she expected. While walking away will cost Kestrin his life, returning to the court may cost Alyrra her own. As Alyrra is coming to realize, sometime the hardest choice means learning to trust herself.
"You are neither goose girl nor lady, but something better than them both."
As far as young adult fantasy goes, I'm pretty easy to please, especially when it comes to fairy tale retellings such as Thorn. Give me at least a semi-interesting plot, a protagonist who doesn't make me want to hurl the book across the room and a little bit of magic and I'm a happy reader. It's really that easy.
But when a book like Thorn comes my way, the equation gets a little more tricky. Mostly because I read Shannon Hale's The Goose Girl first, leaving me hyper-aware of the similarities between these two adaptions and the original fairy tale. It becomes especially distracting when an author is so heavy handed with following the original. If every Cinderella adaption was so obedient to its source material, we wouldn't have the many distinct, intriguing retellings that we have, from Ella Enchanted to Cinder and so on. Thorn, I'll admit, just didn't do enough to be different. From names to events, it very closely resembled the Grimm fairy tale of the same name.
That said, it shined in other ways.
While I was expecting something with a little more kick to it, Thorn managed to surprise me with its emotional presence. In my pre-read thoughts, I mentioned it had a Goose Girl meets Princess Ben vibe, and that mostly sticks. As I said, It very closely follows the Grimm fairy tale and doesn't do too much to subvert it...but protagonist Alyrra still inhabits something familiar while giving it a totally unique emotional feel. Thorn was incredibly, intensely emotional. It does something I wish Mette Ivie Harrison's The Rose Throne had done: it made me sad and angry and hopeful. It upset me and made me love characters that are supposed to be unlovable, and it went far deeper than I expected it to.
Again, I don't think the story itself or the conflict between the royal line and the Lady were as engaging as I'd have liked them to be. But the thing with Thorn is that, while it didn't offer up anything new plot-wise, it created an emotional atmosphere that I really fell in love with. This is especially true of Alyrra, who spends the bulk of the book ignoring her responsibilities and discovering pieces of herself she never knew existed. She's such a misguided character, but so endearing and so genuine. Even when she is beyond selfish, as a reader, I understood every bit of what she did and why.
Some of my favorite moments of Thorn were Alyrra's conversations with horse Falada, whom she grows to love. As Alyrra continues to embrace her misplaced identity, Falada becomes her voice of reason.
"The Menaiyans are your people. They have chosen you. Would you send them a viper in your place?"
Throughout Thorn and with Falada's guidance, Alyrra struggles with her identity and what to do with a responsibility she didn't ask for but nonetheless bears. She considers and rejects, in turn, her role as princess, coming face to face with the consequences of renouncing everything she could be.
"At some point you must take responsibility for your life, Alyrra. No one, you least of all, has the right to betray a person who has implicitly trusted you."
That's why Thorn is a tricky book. Like Shannon Hale's The Goose Girl, Thorn follows the Goose Girl fairy tale too faithfully, especially for the first half. So while I can't say the story did anything for me, the emotional development and relationship between all the characters, from Alyrra to Falada to Kestrin to the Lady, kept me invested until the very last word.
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