the warrior princess of pennyroyal academy

Just as sometimes my wheels can be incredibly useful. Just as with any disability, not every single aspect of it is bad - her removable voice can be extremely useful. There is so much erasure of disabilities in literature, and I was relieved to find that this series does not seem to fall heavily into that ableist habit. Just because she has access to an accessibility device doesn't take away her disability - does having the help of my wheelchair or medications mean I'm no longer disabled? No. Her neckband is her accessibility device, making it possible for her to easily communicate verbally.

Yes, she has her voice back in a way, and granted, magic is involved, but if she doesn't have her neckband, she doesn't have a voice. It's nothing to be ashamed of and quite commonplace in this world, and I'm glad he didn't shy away from most of his characters having some issue - be it a patch of ice for skin or a Princess living as a goat.Įvie's voice now comes from an enchanted neckband, which can be removed or lost if she's not careful.

In fact, I greatly appreciate that there aren't easy remedies for the various ailments caused by witches' curses in such a plagued world, and so it is highly common for people to be living with some difficulty or other (as many do in any world). It could have been easy to say the infirmary princesses found some healing potion that fixed her right up, but Larson didn't do that.

Larson toed the line fairly well - he didn't back down from the damage Evie suffered in order to win the day in the previous book, and he also didn't let that stop her. Of course, you don't want the character to be so disabled that they cannot continue to move forward in the story, and it's much easier to just magic (or science) away the difficulty in some form or another. There are plenty of books where protagonists go on adventures and suffer incredible injuries, even disabilities, which then get erased as they're miraculously fixed and made to be all better. The previous book, The Shadow Cadets of Pennyroyal Academy, left off after a narrow victory that cost Princess Cadet Evie her voice.

The warrior princess of pennyroyal academy