reviewed by
JILL MANGAN
Princess Contessa of Costenopolie thinks she has the perfect life...at least until her fiancé shows up and she learns that she's not a princess after all. The real princess was smuggled away to a convent for safety, and Tess is no more than an orphan brought up in her place. In short order, Tess has to escape the castle, try to find the real Princess, and save Costenopolie from her not-so-nice fiancé. Along the way she finds out she has abilities she's never dreamed of, and certainly doesn't know how to use.
There's a lot to enjoy about this book. Tess is a funny and engaging heroine, who develops throughout the book from a (fairly) pampered Princess into a young woman able to stand on her own and make some tough decisions. Cook builds a complex universe with vivid, memorable characters. I particularly like her ability to introduce the reader to a large number of characters, yet not lose the reader. There's a cast of thousands here, which under many authors can be overwhelming; Cook does an excellent job of characterization and differentiation, and the people stay with you.
Things are a little over-complicated, though. There's an elaborate explanation about what Tess has really been raised to be, but a frustrating lack of background support for the reader--or for Tess, frankly. Tess accepts the explanation with surprisingly little resistance, which is out of whack for a character who has been set up as inquisitive and intelligent.
How Tess (and others like her) get their "magical" powers is also convoluted. Constructing a fantasy world is elaborate, but there's no need to make it more complicated than it already has to be.
Probably due to the fact that this book is the start of a new series, the book doesn't end definitively enough for this reader. Major plot points are resolved, yes, but the ending is still a too-heavy teaser/lead-in for the next book, which left me feeling cheated. Writers want to have series characters, and I get that. You set up a universe once, you work with characters you know and enjoy, etc., and so on and so forth. But books within the series should be reasonably self-contained, and satisfying on their own merits.
The Decoy Princess is a fun ride that should have come to more of a full stop.
