ALA Booklist (Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

Forget the notion of traditional princesses. At Pennyroyal Academy, princesses are trained to fight witches and save kingdoms, and, yes, knights learn to slay dragons. Which brings us to Evie's dilemma: she is training to be a princess, yet she was raised by dragons and was brought to the academy by a dragon-slaying knight wannabe. Larson has crafted a dark Grimm-like fairy tale, with teens training to defeat evil, save villages, and find their own identities in the process. Familiar names like Cinderella and Snow White dot the landscape, while tongue-in-cheek characters like Rumpledshirtsleeves and the Fairy Drillsergeant are part of a no-nonsense faculty charged with readying the girls for combat. Yet the focus and detailed character development is on the young women, their hopes and dreams (sometimes dreadfully scary), their real fears, and their disappointments in themselves, their friends, and the adults around them. Since the book ends with some of the princesses and knights selected to return for another school year, Larson has left the door open for a welcome second year at Pennyroyal with Evie and her friends.

Horn Book

Evie, a new recruit at Pennyroyal Academy, takes her training as a princess seriously--she wants to protect innocents from the witches attacking the Eastern Kingdoms--but her sympathy toward dragons puts her at odds with Remington, a charming knight-in-training. This unusual military-toned addition to the princess genre contains twists to throw readers off balance before rounding to a satisfying conclusion.

School Library Journal (Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

Gr 5-8 Pennyroyal Academy trains princesses and knights to battle the witches and dragons that encroach ever more rapidly on the kingdom's citizens. Cadet Eleven (Evie) does not know her name and fears sharing her past, but she desperately wants to succeed as a princess recruit. As she journeys to the Academy to enroll, she escapes a witch's clutches with the help of knight-in-training Remington, a boy who annoys and intrigues Evie. Once arrived, the heroine makes friends in her unit who support her through the Academy's trials despite the malevolent tricks of Malora, a princess candidate whose nastiness puzzles the protagonist. The Academy's final wilderness challenge forces Evie to face her fears and her past. The intriguing premise of Larson's first novel falters under uneven execution. Fantasy readers will indubitably relish the magical kingdom's fearsome witches and dragons, set in an enchanted landscape of pitfalls and beauties. The assigned challenges add a perilous element that advances the story's pacing. However, the way Larson reveals Evie's past is nothing short of confusing. Readers unravel the protagonist's backstory over time, but Larson's purposeful inconsistencies seem bungled rather than cleverly diverting. Erratic characterizations lead to mercurial behavior and odd comings and goings. Most awkward are the abrupt transitions from one scene to the next. The story lacks a narrative flow, making baffling jumps that leave events unconnected. Adventure fantasy readers would be better off with a Shannon Hale novel or Michael Buckley's "Sisters Grimm" series (Abrams). Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT

Voice of Youth Advocates

The first novel in a planned series, Pennyroyal Academy opens with a young girl lost in a dark, magical forest who stumbles upon a deserted cottage. Hoping for shelter, she enters, quickly realizing she has made a huge mistake. The cottage belongs to a witch who returns with a captured boy. Butàthese are no ordinary boy and girl. The two of them are able to escape the evil witch and begin a journey to Pennyroyal Academy, a school for knights and princesses who learn how to battle evil witches. While at the academy, the girl with no name discovers she is the victim of a curse and slowly learns her true identity.The traditional idea of princesses as kind, generous girls remains true, but Larson has given them other qualities as well: strength and witch-fighting abilities. Pennyroyal Academy is a boot camp for girls to train to join the Princess Army and help rid the world of the evil, dangerous witches. Readers will love the references to well-known Grimm's fairy tales as well as the idea of princesses who are not damsels in distress and can do their own saving. Younger readers who are closer to the princess-loving age may enjoy the novel more, but older readers will also appreciate the girl-power update to the fairy-tale world of their youth.Jen McIntosh.