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Editorial Review Product Description
A political marriage is arranged between the thirty-three-year-old king of Xukpip and Princess Green Jay, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the king of Lakamha. The two are paired because of similar horoscopes -- and Green Jay possesses skills that will be valuable to her husband-to-be: She can read and write. Author Anna Kirwan relates fascinating aspects of ancient Mayan culture as she shares the young princess's physical and emotional state from the betrothal, with its distressing rituals, through her arduous journey to a foreign land and people, and a husband who is a complete stranger. ... Read more Customer Reviews (31) 
Quick delivery, book in a good condition
Book was delivered in 6 days. Condition was described as "very good". There were marker markings on the inside cover, otherwise the book was in a very good condition.
Not a bad book, one of the best royal diaries.
I'm a long-time fan of the series, but I stopped reading them a few years back. I decided to buy the remaining six I needed for my collection, and this one did not disappoint. The names are long, so I kind of just shortened them as I read. I thought the book was very well-written and a unique look into the Mayan culture. Its no Cleopatra or Anastasia, but it is a good add to the collection!
Flawed Approach
Lady of Palenque / 0-439-40971-3
I'm a big fan of the Royal Diary series, and I particularly enjoy reading about the princesses from cultures different from my own. "Lady of Palenque", however, is particularly disappointing, especially on the heels of the superbly-written Lady of Ch'iao Kuo: Warrior of the South, Southern China, A.D. 531 (The Royal Diaries).
I should start by noting that it's always difficult to write about different cultures, particularly ones with vastly different languages than the target readership. The author must decide whether to maintain the spelling of, say, the main character's name (Shahna K'in Yaxchel Pacal) or to provide the translation (Princess Green Jay on the Wall). Personally, I prefer the translation approach, as seen in "Lady of Ch'iao Kuo" where we read about, for instance, her brother "Little Tiger". With "Lady of Palenque" however, the author has decided on a rather bizarre 70/30 approach where 70% of the time she uses the "real" spelling and 30% of the time, she switches to the translation. Or, more frustratingly, she will use both, breaking up the narrative badly with sentences like, "I, Shahna K'in Yaxchel Pacal, Princess Green Jay on the Wall, will go to the baths today," or similar phrasing, which is quite an eyeful for a reader to take in.
This makes it very hard to keep track of characters and the reader is hampered by the fact that names of random people and places are thrown out almost constantly. It doesn't help that the author flat-out refuses to provide helpful clues to relationships within the writing - if you don't remember that "In'Ta" and "In'Na" are the princess' mother and father, you won't be reminded with any helpful "I'm going to see my father, In'Ta today" lines. No, it's all "I'm going to see In'Ta today" and you have to remember who she is talking about. In a novel with, at a rough estimate, twenty-five or thirty characters, that's an unnecessary burden on the reader. The naming issue is so frustrating, in fact, that I venture to guess that 9 out of 10 young adults reading this book probably won't attempt to finish it.
Which might not be a bad decision, unfortunately. The story centers around the young princess' journey to her new husband's home, a great distance away. The journey is perilous, with frayed rope bridges, deadly currents, harsh enemies, constant rain and hurricanes, and dangerous animals. Several people, in fact, die as part of this journey, yet the narrative is so incredibly boring as to defy belief. The dangers never feel real, and the narrator always seems detached and somewhat uninterested in the journey around her, as if she is somehow unaffected by the whole thing. Really, the tales of her distaste for her designated chaperone are recorded with more passion than that of the hurricane they barely manage to live through. It takes talent to turn this story into such a bore, and it is a sharp contrast to the other Royal Diaries which have often transformed the most boring daily life of a princess into an interesting and compelling narrative.
Sadly, there is not as much cultural insight as one could hope for in this novel, largely because the bulk of the narrative occurs on the road and we see little into the "daily life" of either the princess or her companions. There are some lovely stories and fairy tales presented here, but their presentation made me a little uneasy. The narration of the stories is clipped and choppy, and clipped, short sentences usually fail to convey the complexity and beauty of the source material and instead can unintentionally confer a pejorative simplicity onto the story.
For instance, one of the stories reads something much like: "Jaguar went into the fields. He saw that the fields were unplowed. Jaguar was filled with anger. He ate up the loud brothers." Now, I'm extremely ignorant of the fairy tales of the pertinent region and time period, so that may be a faithful rendition, but it sounds very childlike and simplistic. It seems more likely to me that the real source would have been more fluid, along the lines of, "When Jaguar went into the fields and saw that they were unplowed, he was filled with anger. His anger was so great that he turned on the boasting brothers and ate them whole," or something like that. The clipped sentences make the story sound childish, simplistic, and barbaric, and has been used historically to marginalize the culture of many people. I don't know that the author meant to do that here; it just left me a little uncomfortable.
I would not recommend buying this Royal Diary. I understand wanting to complete the collection, but this one is simply a chore to read, and I did not feel that there was enough redeeming value to make it worth the effort. Reading and learning should be fun, not painful.
As a Long-Time Dear America Fan, I Cannot Bear to Recommend This Book
I have to admit that I have been an avid and devoted fan of the Dear America (of which the Royal Diaries is a spinoff) books ever since I stumbled upon them at the age of 12. I bought, checked out, and borrowed every single book in the series I could find for years, and was immensely saddened when the series came to an end three years ago. Although there are some books I have liked more than others, I cannot say I have actually disliked a book in either the Dear America or Royal Diaries series.
That all changed when I recently read one of the books I had missed along the way: Lady of Palenque: Flower of Bacal, by Anna Kirwan. I was initially excited to read a story about a princess from an indigenous tribe long before Columbus arrived in the Americas. However, the book was a disaster to wade through due to its overpowering tribal terminology that provided clichéd descriptions of just about everything - the only problem was that these clichés were completely foreign to me!
Yet I could have dealt with the structure had the story not bored me so terribly! The book begins with the speaker fretting over whether or not she will be selected as bride for King Fire Keeper of Xukpi. The king has never met her, but the marriage is meant simply as a liaison between his kingdom, Xukpi, and the Lady of Palenque's father's kingdom, Bacal. By page 10, the agreement is settled - the Lady of Palenque will marry King Fire Keeper - and she begins her journey with many slaves, servants, and other attendants to the distant kingdom of Xukpi.
Here the author makes a critical mistake. While many tales of journeys can be quite intriguing (Lord of the Rings, for instance), this journey lacks any sense of real storyline or sense of importance. The Lady of Palenque seems to stress in her diary entries that the true excitement is still to come, once she has arrived in Xukpi. However, after reading over 90 pages of this sort of talk, I became frustrated, wondering if the Lady of Palenque ever actually reaches Xukpi. I forced myself to finish reading the book, hoping to find some sort of enjoyment out of the next 110 pages. Unfortunately, it was no better.
As a reader, I found the book frustrating for many reasons. First of all, the reader is tricked into believing that he/she will actually get to find out what this Xukpi court life really is like, especially after the Lady of Palenque worries about so often.Second, the Lady of Palenque demonstrates no true character development - something I personally find so important in a book! The author attempts to account for the Lady of Palenque's lack of character development in the second-to-last entry, in which the Lady of Palenque recounts on how much she has "changed" over the journey. Indeed, she does express less opinions of complete superiority than she did at first, but there is no huge, climatic event that changes her life, other than some deaths that seem, strangely, not as tragic as they could have been. No, the climax of the book already happened - on page 10 of this 206-page book! That is my third annoyance, and the biggest one.
Aside from the grievances I have with the storyline, I found the native stories intriguing. I appreciated the fact that the author included these, along with her careful attention to detail in every last aspect of the characters' lives.
In the end, the book did encourage me to research the real Lady of Palenque - but for all the wrong reasons. In the story, it seemed the author was making a struggling attempt to prove that this character was an important woman, but I could simply not see any compelling reason as to why this character could be at all relevant or inspiring to girls today.
A disappointing entry in an otherwise excellent series.
ShahnaK'in Yaxchel Pacal, or Green Jay on the Wall, is a thirteen-year-old Mayan princess in the year 749 AD. As the daughter of the king of Lakahma, she has been chosen to marry the king of another Mayan kingdom, a man much older than her. Green Jay begins a diary upon learning of her future, and describes the home she grew up in, the customs of her people, her long journey to the land ruled over by her future husband, and the many dangers faced along the way.
I have read The Royal Diaries series since I was a young teenager, and truly enjoyed most of the books in the series. However, I really struggled with this book. I thought it would be interesting to learn about the culture of the lost Mayan civilization through the eyes of a young girl. However, the author tried too hard to give the narrator a distinct voice, rather then writing in a more modern style, and as a result the "diary" felt very detached and impersonal, making it difficult to care about the main character or what happened to her. The details of Mayan life didn't feel very smoothly integrated, and it was difficult to keep all the characters straight due to the confusing names the author used. I am older than the intended audience for this book, and even I had a hard time with it - preteens and young teenagers would probably find the book even more confusing.
I would only recommend this book to the most devoted fans of The Royal Diaries who want to read every book in the series for completion. The author did do her research quite well and put a lot of work into the book (hence the three stars), but ultimately I think the style she chose to write the book in was a poor choice, especially given it was written for young readers.
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