Guest Review: The Last Princess by Galaxy Craze

The Last Princess by Galaxy Craze

May 1, 2012

Poppy

Young Adult | Dystopian 

The Last Princess #1

Pages: 295

Source/Format: Publisher/Hardcover

Rating: ★ 1/2

Happily ever after is a thing of the past. 
A series of natural disasters has decimated the earth. Cut off from the rest of the world, England is a dark place. The sun rarely shines, food is scarce, and groups of criminals roam the woods, searching for prey. The people are growing restless. 
When a ruthless revolutionary sets out to overthrow the crown, he makes the royal family his first target. Blood is shed in Buckingham Palace, and only sixteen-year old Princess Eliza manages to escape. Determined to kill the man who destroyed her family, Eliza joins the enemy forces in disguise. She has nothing left to live for but revenge, until she meets someone who helps her remember how to hope-and love-once more. 
Now she must risk everything to ensure that she does not become . . . 
The Last Princess.

TARA'S REVIEW:

  

There are books in which revenge is such a pivotal moment in the story that it makes you want to keep turning the page. In The Last Princess by Galaxy Craze, this wasn’t so.

The story is about Eliza Windsor, the middle child of the Windsor family that has been ruling a devastated England after (and before) the Seventeen Days (which I’m sure was some sort of war or something. The author doesn’t go into much detail). When her father is murdered by a man named Cornelius Hollister and takes her older sister and younger brother, Eliza is determined to kill the man and reunite with her siblings.

This should have been a riveting story about avenging family and finding yourself. Unfortunately it fell short of any such thing.

 The writing itself is so simple, it seems like it was written for younger kids. You know that whole thing about “showing” verses “telling”? Craze told me more than showed me. With the very simple, very straight forward sentence structure I couldn’t get into the world. I understood that it was post-war, post-apocalyptic England.

As for the characters, I didn’t feel anything for Eliza. I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel sorry for her losing her mother. I didn’t feel sorry for her when she lost her father, or when she went incognito to the new Guard to try and find Cornelius Hollister. But even Cornelius Hollister wasn’t a good villain. Okay, so her family was having a ball while others were starving. Yeah, that’s a weak motivation. I wanted him to be like V in V for Vendetta and blow crap up to make a statement. Instead, he was the cliche villain that didn’t make me want to cheer for Eliza to go kill him.

Craze developed this relationship between Eliza and a soldier named Wesley. (Remember when I mentioned simple writing? She would write one scene like, “Then we were kissing.” Okay...so what happened after the kissing? I didn’t feel connected to this relationship at all.) There was no spark. There was nothing about it that made me truly believe there was something between those two characters. Perhaps it was because she didn’t go into detail. Or maybe it was because Eliza was totally in to it at first and then was like “oh, you’re on the bad side. See you later.” And everything just fell short.

The only thing that was somewhat redeeming was the tiny twist at the end that I completely predicted.

To conclude, this was nothing special. It was a dystopian that was trying to hard to be one, and didn’t quite come together as it should.

  

You can read Ashelynn's review here.

 Tara Fouts is 25 years old and lives in the Bay Area of California. She's a writer who loves to read, keep up with the latest in pop culture (thanks, TMZ app!), and is probably addicted to Coffee. Her blog is Finding Wonderland.

If you would like to be a guest reviewer on Gypsy Book Reviews, please drop me an email: ashelynnhetland @ gmail dot com. Thank you!