Book summary

Many little girls dream that they are really princesses, and one day their destiny will come to fetch them. This literally comes true for Miranda Popescu in Paul Park's tale of parallel worlds, the first of a series. Miranda has only a few scattered memories of the time before she was adopted at the age of three from a Romanian orphanage and brought by her new parents to live in a small Massachusetts town. But after a mysterious boy burns one of 15-year-old Miranda's Romanian possessions, she and two of her friends, Peter and Andromeda, are transported to another world. In that place, Peter recovers his missing arm, Andromeda becomes a yellow dog, and both politics and prophecy suggest that Miranda has a vital role to play in her homeland of "Roumania," a powerful European empire.

Media reviews

"Sharp characterization and an unusual historical backdrop distinguish Park's charming leadoff to an intricate new fantasy series....[T]he wily baroness and the necromancing elector promise dashing adventure and delicious heartbreak ahead."