While the other ladies of Sparta are home sewing and waiting for their husbands to return from adventures, Helen takes her life into her own hands. The princess—disguised as a boy—escapes the palace walls to demand lessons from her older brothers’ trainer, Glanus. Her impulsiveness and bravery earn her a spot on the training field, much to her brothers’ dismay. But when turmoil strikes, Helen will need to don her sword, skill, and cunning to prove that she’s more than just a “pretty face.”
Before cracking open the cover of this book, I would prescribe putting on your coat (unless you live south of the Equator), purchasing a dictionary, and locating the word “ditz” to describe Helen of Troy. But Esther Friesner has changed my outlook on the Spartan princess. Besides her famed beauty, what does anyone know about her? How did she feel about Paris? What were her thoughts, feelings, and emotions? How did she spend her childhood? While Homer added adventure, romance, and drama to The Iliad, he forgot personality. Esther Friesner turns “the face the launched a thousand ships” into an extraordinary teen in her novel Nobody’s Princess, the story of Helen of Troy’s bravery, stubbornness, and beauty.
In Nobody’s Princess, Friesner weaves the tale of a young princess desperate for an adventure of her own. Armed with striking good looks Aphrodite is proud of and sword skills every man in Sparta envy, Helen seizes her future without the assistance of others. This book is a window in the Bronze Age, a time of extraordinary and unlikely heroes like our very own Helen.
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