4/25/2018 c8 Spazthemagicbeanstalk
Oh god, I'm so invested in this story! I can't wait for the next update! Honestly, I love all of your stories- I spent about a week absorbing all of them- but this the one I'm always most excited about getting new chapters for.

Keep up the phenomenal work!

4/25/2018 c8 Just Me
...that was intense...
Im really excited for the next chapter! I hope Sam will be able to understand why Nat took the egg and wont be too angry with her
Also hope he won't be forced to declare war
Really really hope everything works out for Nat and Sam!

4/19/2018 c1 4Lady Katreina
This series finally made me rustle up my old account, as well as spend a day or two straight consuming your words at breakneck speeds. The only reason I'm glad this particular story isn't finished is because you deserve a lot of feedback, and here I am. About to give you a single review for the whole series...
(That is pretty stingy, because your writing deserves much more than that, however, give me a while to forget all the details, do a reread, and then I'll be in a better place for constructive feedback.)

You have created a world with serious planning. Whether you'd meant for the princesses' gift to be "as simple" as they are or you'd worked it into the second book, it was so smooth and convincing I couldn’t tell which. It makes the girls tragic products of their surroundings, but you’ve given each of them a backbone, and a stage, in which to shine, because of or despite their gifts. Your villains make complete sense, as well as reactions to them from the characters.

The fact that you nursed along villains, and in fact one is still alive I thought murdered by his father, made the plot much more compelling. The death of the witch, too, in The Eagle Princess was a surprise because at times I wondered if she was redeemable, despite what she’d done. Your writing allowed her life to go in many directions, and you chose the right one cementing that in this world, witches are not redeemable, are not good or kind, and although they should not be compared to right and wrong, as Baba Yaga should not be, there are consequences for poor actions.

I have had a lot of tumultuous feelings for him but now I pity Giles; when nothing bad happened to the kingdom between The Eagle Princess and The Dragon Princess I knew he really does want Nat’s industriousness on the throne “legitimately” and now Nat is finally stretching her wings. Elsewhere. She is getting a taste of true freedom away from expectations of royalty, and away from the “surprise” everyone has of her being an actual princess. She is building her own fresh set of expectations, from others, and soon for herself. Giles will have no recourse when Sam is likely to ask for her hand, or she his, when inevitably she’ll have to “return” the stolen dragon to stop the coming war- a dragon that will not thrive in the cold north away from the sea- and likely be the exchange herself instead. Giles’ deviousness is well written, his reasons ironclad though fanatical. Although he could become the “final boss” he is nothing away from the kingdom of Poseidonium, and as no one knows it is him behind attacks to the royal family, and likely now the king’s poisoning, I can see a possible future where, depressed, he retains his position, no one the wiser, the fourth princess lost to him and now a queen elsewhere. And that, I think, is the most positive of the many outcomes he could have.

You’ve given each princess a “prince” who complements them, and their positions, desires, and talents well. Reanna, a man who knows the kingdom, grew up a noble, experienced magic and of course, visually, they’re two golden rulers-to-be. I had no idea where you could go with Andromeda’s love due to her “gift.” It was clever of you to wait to reveal the true nature of Oceane’s gifts until the second princess, so to her a man with different expectations, strength, wanderlust, and protection from magic, incidentally the reason she lost her own but no matter! Larissa and her Kaz prove to each other, and the audience, why they’re good for one another. What a wonderful way to ensure Larissa knows Casimir isn’t merely swayed by her looks, another example of good story building methinks, (and as an aside, well done coaxing Larissa into being a judge, soon her people’s expectations will be great beauty and even greater adherence to the balance). Currently, Nat is helping Sam into becoming a greater ruler, actually doing his job, and adding a bit of levity to the serious minded kitchen maid, but only time will tell whether he has benefits to offer to the relationship other than the lie of his position.

Oceane is beautifully introduced, a slow build going from secondhand accounts of an aloof deity, likely to get angry at her gifts being called curses, to a truly helpful, albeit sneaky and tricksterish, godmother (she is favorably comparable to Mercedes Lackey’s Five Hundred Kingdoms type godmothers.) Her loss of magic is a delightful and believable way to make her more fallible, a great reason to grant the particular gift she has given to the princesses, and makes me as a reader root for her schemes against the less loving, but more powerful war goddess and lava god. How did she get so sneaky, and why haven’t other gods done similar things? Or is she doubly sneaky because the gods did not expect these schemes from the weaker daughter of a divine being. She has a keen eye for possible futures, and the streams people’s lives could take and is an excellent gambler. I mean godmother. The latter is always the former I suppose. I look forward to how the sea dragon expands her powerbase into and against the lava god’s domain.

It does seem interesting to me that each of the princesses rebel verbally in similar ways to their mother; she is a rather hard-headed woman. Each sister must yell at the queen at some point in order to attempt to get their point across, and as of yet I think none of them succeed with words. She hasn’t demonstrated she’s a bad ruler, but rarely do we get to see her ruling the kingdom with her husband instead of merely ruling her daughters’ futures, -now that I type it, I think that very sentiment is in the first book. The way Reanna becomes with Andromeda, commanding, hard-headed, and hard-hearted to the freedom versus safety of her sister shows that, Melania, however, is everyone’s expectations of a queen.

I suppose I shall just have to wait to see how Nat’s story unfolds and frequent Fictionpress more often.

Completely separate, yet inextricably entwined, is your word use. You’ve crafted sentences which engage, intrigue, and draw a rich atmosphere of history, action, and internal life. I would say you’ve become quite adept at stringing words together in a way that neither bores with too much detail, nor confuses with too little. Without going back through the text I know that I was rarely “kicked out” by reading an occasional misspelling, nor was the story made dull by too many similar, or similar sized, sentences in a row, nor too much or little conversation.

Thank you for an engaging story, interesting and uniquely strong heroines, and especially the varied verbiage one hopes for in order to keep a long series exciting.

4/18/2018 c7 2C. M. Brighid Bachleda
Poor Nate...T_T

4/5/2018 c5 Amelie
:(((

3/29/2018 c4 Guest
I’d love to hear more description from Sam’s POV about how Nat looks to him, which is probably closest to how she actually looks without the spell. Her expectation spell only activated if people know her power, right? We have a little bit from Nero and Andy, but everyone else has the preconceived bias about her.

Does Nat’s expectation spell also work when people assume she’s just a scullery/kitchen maid? So that’s how people see her (they expect a plain common maid), versus if they assumed she is royalty (but not the “plain” princess)?

3/28/2018 c4 C. M. Brighid Bachleda
Now that is better and interesting...