The Princess Game - Soman Chainani - ★

AUTHOR: Soman Chainani

SERIES: Faraway Collection, #3

GENRE: Retelling.

RATING: 1 star.

In a Nutshell: Yikes!

Story Synopsis:

Five female students of Chaminade High have been murdered within a few days, with their bodies positioned in a fairy-tale like tableau. To locate the killer, rookie detective Callum Penderson has been posing as a student at the school, trying to get intoi the inner circle of the popular boys, aka the ‘Princes’, in a bid to find more. But he soon discovers that the situation is far more intricate than he had assumed.

This standalone short story is a part of the Faraway series, described on Amazon as “a collection of retold fairy tales that take the happily-ever-after in daring new directions.”

As a reader, you can have mainly two kinds of experiences with this story:

➤ You will enjoy the portrayal of toxic masculinity as depicted through various male characters, reading the story like a kind of satirical comment on masculine behaviour, and applaud the author for showing such misogynistic behaviour as is.

OR

➤ You will keep rolling your eyes at the hackneyed, one-dimensional portrayal of toxic masculinity that touches upon everything from sexism to sexual assault to homophobia, jumping from trope to trope without doing justice to any of the themes.

My rating tells you which category I fit in.

The story matches the theme of the Faraway collection only partially. It isn’t a retold fairytale. Rather, it incorporates elements from various fairytales into the murders. The ending is definitely not a happily-ever-after, but comes straight out of one of Poirot’s most popular mysteries. While I could see this ending coming because of the ample foreshadowing, it did suit the story and ended it on the right note of ‘What will happen next?’ So, a good, if not original, ending. There’s also some decent diversity in the cast, which can be credited to the author’s roots. (BiPoc authors are far better at ensuring racial inclusiveness.)

That’s all the positive stuff I have to say about this little story of 53 pages. Now get ready for the deluge of negatives.

🚩The story is written as a transcript of recordings from Callum’s phone, which gives it a documentary kind of feel. But keeping the names straight across so many characters is tricky when we don’t have any background info and are trying to know them only through conversations and notes.

🚩 The format also doesn’t work to keep us invested in the investigation. As a major content comes to us in a playscript style, we get more caught up in figuring out who is speaking than in what’s being said.

🚩 There are plenty of male characters in the story, and every single one of them who has a speaking role, is a jerk. Entitled men do exist, but a story that has only entitled men? BORING!

🚩 All the ‘princes’ have clichéd portrayals. Even the lone Indian character fits into the hackneyed ‘top ranker, great in studies, not so good at sports or socialising’ mould. There’s no depth to any of them, each one being as flat as a paper dosa!

🚩 The main detective Chang acted as if he had never investigated anything ever before. How was he so blind? And please, five girls are murdered and you send a halfwit, self-centred rookie as an undercover agent? Sheesh!

🚩 The undercover detective seemed to be more focussed on making the best of his second chance in high school than on doing his work.

🚩 As the setting is a high school, the tone is very much YA, despite the fact that the two detectives are driving the story through their investigation. And how much I like YA is an open secret.

🚩 The overall writing is juvenile in approach, but I can’t even recommend to the younger age group because of the crude and outdated masculine values.

🚩 The dialogues seem to come straight out of a B-grade 1980s college flick. I almost pictured the male suspects with a leather jacket and over-gelled hair, walking with a swag despite being investigated for a heinous crime. Please! Give contemporary high school boys more credit!

🚩 I don’t even want to get started on the limited female characters. Though only one girl has an on-page role, the portrayal of every female character is forcefully patronising. Their sole purpose on earth seems to be to be objectified by the men, and when they start to rebel, they get killed. Please! Give contemporary high school girls also more credit for common sense in their choices!

🚩 Generalisation in any way is harmful, and this story does it in bucket loads. The only purpose of the girls in this tale is to be murdered. The only purpose of the boys in this tale is to act cocky.

🚩 Because of the foreshadowing, even the “mystery” falls flat on its face. You can see the ending coming much before its declaration. A mystery must give us various suspects. But when all the suspects act equally dodgy, it’s so easy to guess what’s coming.

🚩 You get to know the whodunnit, but not the howdunnit. No details on the modus operandi behind the murders.

🚩 The reveal before the ending that talks of the motivation behind the murders. Seriously?

🚩 While I did like the ending, I must add that it is akin to a cliffhanger. So if you don’t like open endings, whoops!

🚩 Alice in Wonderland isn’t a fairy tale!

(OMG, 16 red flags already?!! Stop, Rosh, stop! Get a grip!)

Honestly, I had been quite excited about reading this story as it is by an Indian-origin author who is quite reputed for his ‘The School for Good and Evil’ series. However, my trusted GR friend Thibault’s 2-star review offered enough of a warning to lower my expectations. The above is a rant after lowering my expectations. Imagine what would have happened had I not been prepared for disappointment! 👀

Not at all recommended, though of course you are free to make up your own mind. Then again, it *might* just work if you read it as a satire, though it isn’t meant to be one.

This is the third standalone story from the Faraway Collection, and is available for free to Amazon Prime subscribers.