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This is a sequel to The Princess and the Hound, but you only need to know the heroine’s background (she’s a hound who was cursed to become a human-and the human princess a hound-and has returned to her original form) from that, and to know that in the kingdom the book is set in, magic is outlawed, and having any sort of magical ability gets you killed.
No longer fitting in anywhere, the hound flees to the forest, where she becomes the companion of a bear who is actually Richon, the king who created the laws against magic users 200 years before, and has been cursed ever since. Much of the first half of the book is the two forging a companionship with no shared language as supposedly incompatible animals, and the second has them transformed again into humans, and seeking the truth of what really happened 200 years ago (Richon isn’t absolved of his crimes, so no fear of “poor king was horribly framed” copouts), and how it’s affecting magic in the present.
I was meh-ed by The Princess and the Hound, which sounded promising and ended up technically good, but on the dull side for me, due to the choice of narrative focus. (Angsty prince with Special Powers, daddy issues, and dead mommy angst vs a princess and a hound forced to switch forms and trying to escape the power of an evil sorcerer? It seems an easy choice to me…) This one, however, I liked a lot, and I look forward to the next book in the series, which is about the daughter of the leads of The Princess and the Bear.
No longer fitting in anywhere, the hound flees to the forest, where she becomes the companion of a bear who is actually Richon, the king who created the laws against magic users 200 years before, and has been cursed ever since. Much of the first half of the book is the two forging a companionship with no shared language as supposedly incompatible animals, and the second has them transformed again into humans, and seeking the truth of what really happened 200 years ago (Richon isn’t absolved of his crimes, so no fear of “poor king was horribly framed” copouts), and how it’s affecting magic in the present.
I was meh-ed by The Princess and the Hound, which sounded promising and ended up technically good, but on the dull side for me, due to the choice of narrative focus. (Angsty prince with Special Powers, daddy issues, and dead mommy angst vs a princess and a hound forced to switch forms and trying to escape the power of an evil sorcerer? It seems an easy choice to me…) This one, however, I liked a lot, and I look forward to the next book in the series, which is about the daughter of the leads of The Princess and the Bear.