THE LOST PRINCESS RETURNS is aptly named by author Jeffe Kennedy, telling the story of the traumatized Imperial Princess Jenna returning to the country of her degradation as her triumphant alter ego Ivariel. Make sure that you read the “Dear Reader” introduction at the beginning of the book, though, which does a great job of showing the multiple levels of interconnectedness of the vast universe of the Twelve Kingdoms, Uncharted Realms, and Chronicles of Dasnaria stories and how this book fits in with the many others.
Imperial Princess Jenna fled her cruel family and her sadistic husband twenty years ago. She recrafted herself to become a warrior and a Priestess of Danu, falling in love and raising a family along the way. She’s become such an honorable person. I have so enjoyed watching her over the course of the series as she renamed herself Ivariel and invented a new identity, matured, and ultimately found happiness and purpose. Now that magic has returned to the lands, Ivariel feels she must return to the land of her birth to keep a promise she made to her captive sisters.
In order to fulfill that promise, Ivrariel must confront and defeat her evil brother who has become the Emperor of Dasnaria, along with her power-mad mother. Fortunately, Ivariel has a lot of help for this final battle. An ensemble cast gathers to fight Jenna’s twisted family and the tainted god Deyrr that Jenna’s flight liberated decades prior. This is a quick read, but no less satisfying for its brevity. The innate purity of will and spirit that our heroes and heroines display keeps the story from becoming too dark. Kennedy does her usual deft work at magical plotting and at battle scenes, keeping the tension high. THE LOST PRINCESS RETURNS wraps Kennedy’s Chronicles of Dasnaria series up nicely, providing closure to the princess and the reader.
More than two decades have gone by since Imperial Princess Jenna, broken in heart and body, fled her brutal marriage—and the land of her birth. She’s since become Ivariel: warrior, priestess of Danu, trainer of elephants, wife and mother. Wiser, stronger, happier, Ivariel has been content to live in her new country, to rest her battered self, and to recover from the trauma of what happened to her when she was barely more than a girl.
But magic has returned to the world—abruptly and with frightening force—and Ivariel takes that profound change as a sign that it’s time to keep a promise she made to the sisters she left behind. Ivariel must leave the safety she’s found and return to face the horrors she fled.
As Ivariel emerges from hiding, she discovers that her vicious brother is now Emperor of Dasnaria, and her much-hated mother, the Dowager Empress Hulda, is aiding him in his reign of terror. Worse, it seems that Hulda’s resurrection of the tainted god Deyrr came about as a direct result of Jenna’s flight long ago.
It’s up to Ivariel—and the girl she stopped being long ago—to defeat the people who cruelly betrayed her, and to finally liberate her sisters. Determined to cleanse her homeland of the evil that nearly destroyed her, Ivariel at last returns to face the past.
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