UNTWISTED

Middle school is really hard…even if you’re a princess.

After saving their mother from a curse in Twinchantment (2019), brown-skinned princesses Flissa and Sara thought they had ushered in a new age of unity for Kaloon’s non-Mages, like their parents, Mages like them, and Magical Animals. But with Kaloonification, all children—Mages, the general population, and Magical Animals alike—must attend the same public school, led by headmistress Amala, an old Mage once associated with the movement to cleanse Kaloon of its nonmagical population. She’s supposedly reformed, but as the kids get into the swing of things, tensions among the three groups of students do nothing but rise, and Amala seems but performatively concerned at best. Sara and Flissa’s own relationship becomes strained as they for the first time enter the public world as individuals, not twins pretending to be one princess. The book is both a typical middle school story of changing friendships and alliances, just with magic added, and also a slightly heavy-handed allegory about bigotry, social justice, and community. With so many groups of people, it’s sometimes difficult to keep the characters straight, and a rushed, clichéd ending cheapens what is otherwise a delightful story. But this is high fantasy that reads as contemporary, with magical technology and everyday, colloquial speech rather than the affected, medieval-meets-Renaissance language and customs characteristic of most high fantasy, neatly broadening its audience.

Sits in a comfortable midpoint on the fluffy-to-substantive spectrum, giving it broad appeal.