The Books of Bayern: The Goose Girl Review

Hale’s haunting retelling of The Goose Girl starts with a princess, a princess born with a word at her tongue. Once she awakes three days later, she doesn’t know the name but she grows entangled with the speech of animals. It’s an ancient magic, and a distrusted one compared to people-speak.

Princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee or Ani for short, doesn’t feel suited for the intricacies of people-speak and ruling as she’s been trained to do. Even though she’s crown princess, the subtleties leave her nervous and tongue-tied. She feels like a failure as a crown princess and uncertain of her future. It’s a bleak one as her distant, affectionless mother prevents Ani from interacting with animals that would encourage her attempts at animal-speak.

But her future is out of her hands when her mother abruptly decides to marry her off and have her young brother rule Kildenree instead. Ani will be queen of Bayern instead, the arranged bride for a stranger prince.

Just as with the original tale, Ani’s lady-in-waiting, Selia, contrives a coup among the soldiers so she may take Ani’s place as princess and Ani barely escapes with her life. Forced to hide in the city as a mere goose girl, Ani must learn to harness her magic and her strength to reclaim her title and her name.

First off, Hale’s prose is just haunting. Not in a creepy scary story way but you can just imagine the narrator having the smooth voice that draws you deeper into the story. The prose is evocative in its physical description as well as its metaphorical descriptions of Ani’s emotions during this tumultuous time.

Hale’s worldbuilding is top-notch as well, painting a German-inspired kingdom with clear rules for its magic beliefs in the power of language, class stratification, and conflict between Kildenree and Bayern necessitating marital alliances that can quickly turn into war thanks to the manipulations of Selia and her mercenary lover, Ungolad.

Ani’s arc is the strongest as each betrayal does harden her heart and ability to trust but it also opens her eyes to how limited her world was as a princess. She never had to do her own dress strays, cook or make friends, accepting her servants compliance and loyalty as a steadfast thing. Working as a goose girl lets her see the community among the Forest born workers, so lively and different compared to her life of “elevation, seperation, and delegation.”

It also opens her to the strength she didn’t know she had. Ani started out anxious of her ability to leave, hating how she was the type of girl who obediently followed her duty rather than stand up for herself. She didn’t think she had the power.

But her love for the friends she made like Enna, and Geric, the injustice she’s faced, the deaths she mourned over, and the potential danger the traitors bring to her home kingdom spark her to fight. She begins to hold herself as the princess she actually is, able to command and expect to be heard. You see, half of the battle is having the confidence to play the part of the royal. Plus I like the messaging it has about how expectation plays into public perception and makes Ani wonder if people will turn against her as easily as they believed in Selia to be the queen or her friends to believe in her stories. So much was a matter of appearance that it’s frightening how quickly minds can be swayed into believing lies or the truth because it fits with their premade ideas.

Hale’s story follows the fairytale beats of a thin yet moving romance between the prince and the goose girl that leads to happily ever after, but it also takes aspects of the Grimm version with sharp moments of violence and important character deaths. Yet there is a dash of modern humor as well as Ani standing alone to rescue herself and her prince at the end.

It was a delightful tale and I can’t wait to read Enna’s story tomorrow.

4 stars.