Comments on: Palace of Stone, with Mark Flowers

By: Meghan

Meghan — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 23:39:10 +0000

I certainly agree with Alys about Britta in the courtyard with the little boy. Given the insight we had been privy to as readers regarding the nature of the mob, the reaction Hale provided was very unrealistic to me. As were several scenes close to the end of the book. As someone else mentioned, I felt the book was very politically charged and precisely developed up until the closing. It seemed to me that Hale then felt the need to make a tidy little ending, and it just didn’t mesh with the rest of the novel. The change in the nature of the queen, the sudden passing of the tribute law, pretty much everything that happened in the room with the assassin, just did NOT work for me as a reader.

That being said, Mark’s points about the dueling dichotomies theme rang true to me and reminded me what I love about Hale’s writing. When it comes to committing to a theme- this girl is all in. Despite the plot disparities I found at the end, I still felt the plot was in sync with the theme.

By: Brandy

Brandy — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 00:58:02 +0000

I don’t think likability is a factor in delineation of character, so long as there is no intention of them being likable. I also had no interest in the characters in S&G, particularly the ones focused on the most. However, I do see clearly why Schlitz chose the characteristics she did for them, why she had them play the roles they were playing, and how they played their parts in the story she was telling and played them well. Not so much in PALACE. I enjoyed reading PALACE more though.

What Sondy said about working serious issues into a fairy-tale plot is, I think, why I am having a problem with this one. What was the intention there? Was it to highlight the serious issues or diminish them? Because I feel like she did the latter. There is a can’t-we-all-just-get-along-naivete to the resolution that doesn’t mesh with the seriousness of the revolution. I think I would have swallowed it better if the revolutionary movement had been just beginning and not reaching its boiling point. The scene Alys brought up with Britta was a real sticking point for me too. As it began I thought, “Britta is going to be hurt/killed. Things are about to get real!” But no-not so much, and what actually happened in no way fits the reaction of an unruly blood thirsty angry mob. It makes more sense if the book was intended to romanticize the idea of revolution, but I don’t think that was its intent. This is why the distinguished theme argument is not working for me on this one.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:48:18 +0000

Sondy, I don’t like an obvious summing-up either, but I think whether or not the author included those things in the first book, there was nothing in the second to make me believe they were true. They were stated, but why wasn’t this history borne out in the interactions of the people in the book? I don’t mean that I wanted the whole back story, I mean that I wanted to see special warmth between Miri and Britta and some kind of star quality from Miri, or whatever it is that would have made her the prince’s choice.

By: Jonathan Hunt

Jonathan Hunt — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:18:13 +0000

For what it’s worth (i.e. not very much), I didn’t care for the characters in S&G either. They could’ve all been turned into puppets. Good riddance! The names–Parsefall, Wintermute, Pinchbeck–struck me as trying too hard to be Dickensian and not succeeding as well as, say, the immortal Miss Slighcarp in THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE. I also have to say that I rarely get scared by what I read (even as a child) so the gothic atmosphere and the imminent threat of danger didn’t help things much.

But I don’t think this has anything to do with Schlitz; it has everything to do with me. I’m simply the wrong reader for this book. I can objectively see how a different reader would not only care very deeply for those characters, but also see this book as the most distinugished book of the year.

By: Mark Flowers

Mark Flowers — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:36:53 +0000

Sondy said: “Does “delineation of character” include likeability? Because I just didn’t care much about the characters in S&G.” That’s an interesting question. I think it matters to the criteria if the author was *trying* to make you like their characters and failed in that attempt, but not at all if likeability is not an issue with which the author is concerned. I’d love to hear more from Sondy on SPLENDORS AND GLOOM vs. PALACE OF STONE because I can’t seem to get a bead on S&G in the least. Were there specific things that you think Schlitz did wrong with her characters?

By: Sondy

Sondy — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:27:09 +0000

I admit, I don’t necessarily trust my judgment with Shannon Hale books. I love her books and want other people to feel the same. Princess Academy was probably my LEAST favorite of all her books, but it won a Newbery Honor! Woo-hoo! So with this book, I came at it thinking, Yay! Here’s another book that a committee might find as distinguished as I do.

I love that Mark has pointed out one of the reasons the book is good. I couldn’t put my finger on it as well as he did, but, yes, the theme is explored throughout the book. I thought the plot is also distinguished, with many different threads running from the start of the book through the end.

The objections some commenters had — Miri’s friendship with Britta, that Miri would definitely have been chosen if not Britta — were factors covered in the first book. So that is one way that being a sequel hurts the book — though having read the first book, I always prefer when the author doesn’t include an obvious summing-up.

Now, all that said, I still don’t think I love this book as much as Goose Girl, or any of the Books of Bayern. But I definitely love it more than Splendors and Glooms, which is more to the point of Newbery discussion. Does “delineation of character” include likeability? Because I just didn’t care much about the characters in S&G. I could go on….

Like I said, I don’t trust my perspective on this one, but I already knew that I loved the way she worked in serious issues into a fairy-tale type plot, giving it depth but keeping it a light-hearted fantasy tale. Then Mark comes along and puts the discussion in terms of the Newbery criteria. Yes!

By: Alys

Alys — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:34:14 +0000

Oh, I forgot to add that there was one scene that I did not believe for a single second. The scene where Britta runs out into the courtyard to save the little boy (losing her slippers and becoming “shoeless” in the process) was absolute fantasy from start to finish. Once she had saved the boy then maybe, MAYBE the incredibly revved up rebels with itchy trigger fingers might have held their fire. But when she first runs off the stage they didn’t know what she was doing. I cannot believe that they wouldn’t all have started shooting immediately. I don’t have the book, but I think there’s even a sentence about the news drifting back towards the edge of the crowd slowly. It just doesn’t make sense that all of those people with guns or other weapons, all of whom were riding an emotional high and therefore probably not thinking all of their actions through carefully, would have withheld their anger and not shot her. So much of the revolution’s resolution, the sudden shift of empathy with Britta rides on this scene, and it’s just so unbelievable, right down to the cliche of “little child about to be run over”.

By: Jonathan Hunt

Jonathan Hunt — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 17:52:34 +0000

The cover model for PRINCESS ACADEMY/PALACE OF STONE is pretty, to be sure, she’s only the ugly duckling when compared to the superhumanly beautiful people on the Bayern paperbacks. Clearly, Bloomsbury has chosen to pitch this cover to the romance market. I just wish they had illustrated the hardcover and waited for paperback to do this cover.

Last year, Horn Book did an interview with Franny Billingsley in which she talked about the dichotomy between saving your soul (BEAUTY) and saving the kingdom (THE BLUE SWORD). I think more than perhaps any other author currently writing Shannon Hale is able to bridge the gap between BEAUTY and THE BLUE SWORD in a single novel.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 15:59:45 +0000

(I guess my post didn’t make it in before the downtime; apologize if this general idea eventually shows up twice.)

I think I was the only one who compared the book to the THIEF series, at least here, but I only did it in the context of both this and A CONSPIRACY OF KINGS being sequels. (I do agree that this is younger, but I don’t think the comparison is so far off, at least in other ways.) I was thinking of other Newbery-crowned sequels and how they handle the recapping issue. DICEY’S SONG is another I read before the first book, and while there were a few things that puzzled me and that I didn’t understand until I’d read HOMECOMING, I thought the book both worked without having read the first and didn’t have awkward recaps. (A SOLITARY BLUE, which I thought was the best of the lot, didn’t have such a hard row to hoe, being a companion rather than a true sequel.)

This is getting monotonous, but I felt the same about honor book A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT (though I knew the others very well before reading that) and A YEAR DOWN YONDER. I could go on, but I think my point is that there are actually quite a number of sequels and later-in-the-series books in the canon, but one thing they seem to have in common to me is that they handle any necessary recapping gracefully, and I didn’t find that in PALACE OF STONE.

By: Mark Flowers

Mark Flowers — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 01:48:24 +0000

A word about age levels:
I’m a little perplexed at this title being compared to SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS, SERAPHINA, and THE QUEEN’S THIEF series. I see all of those novels as being very high MG edging rapidly into YA (indeed SERAPHINA and the entire THIEF series are in the teen section of my library). While I see PALACE OF STONE as being a much lower level MG novel. In my mind, I was comparing it to Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series — books which were easy for me to read at 9 or 10 and easy for me to understand as my mother read them to me at an even younger age. Having brought up Alexander, I bring up probably the greatest all time example of books aimed at this reading level which address political and ethical themes from a truly nuanced and complex perspective. And, frankly, I don’t think PALACE OF STONE lives up to those books. But it’s in the ballpark. And it is against books of that age/reading level that I think Hale’s complexity of theme and plot delineation, etc. should be compared, not against the incredible complexity of Megan Turner.