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A strikingly well-penned debut inspired by Irish folklore, The Princess Knight is a love letter to Legally Blonde and high fantasy alike.

Princess Clíodhna is beautiful. Agreeable. Graceful. Perfect. With her engagement to Prince Domhnall on the horizon, all Clía has to do is keep up the act. Be perfect. The perfect Princess, the perfect daughter, the perfect wife. Her path is set. This match will protect her kingdom for another generation. It all comes down to this moment. Only Prince Domhnall doesn’t propose, he needs a warrior, not a soft-skinned royal rose, a weak woman who cannot rule by his side. Crushed, and furious, Clía intends to win him back. She follows him to the hardest and most respected of their continents military academies, a place where she will have to prove herself again and again, a place where swordplay, strength, and stamina are more important than courtly fashion and gossip. She hadn’t bargained on Ronan, Domhnall’s closest friend, a warrior whose beauty is bested only by his skill, a man whose surprising kindness, patience, and humour fill her cold days with new warmth. With war on the horizon, and both her heart and betrothal on the line, Clía will do whatever it takes to save her friends, and her country, even if it means becoming an accomplished warrior….what, like it’s hard?

Jacobs is an exceptional writer. This was a novel which, for all its intricacies, was readable, and enjoyable. A sprawling world contained in a respectable 300-odd pages, populated by well-rounded characters, with thoroughly considered motivations, flaws, and strengths. Humorous, but well-balanced, the jokes never took away from the emotion or gravity of a scene. Their employment of the Irish language lent a linguistic complexity to the work: as someone with an Irish background, I found the names and nods to folklore familiar, and I was delighted to find them throughout! A woman named for the Queen of the Bean Sidhe coming across one in the wild was a particularly nice touch, and the scene, for all its gravity, gave me a bolt of genuine glee – I felt in on the joke.

This book is knocked from a full 5 stars, for me, by the repetitiveness throughout. Jacobs, whilst a very capable writer, whose work was mechanically spotless and otherwise exceptionally well-structured, has a habit of reiterating lore they have already covered. We are told repeatedly about the Gods, and especially about their connection to the mountains, without learning anything new. We are told repeatedly about Clía’s court, and the failings of her parents, and reminded again and again about the importance or reputations of specific characters. I think this time and space could have been used to unpack other areas of the world a bit more, I never truly felt I understood the other countries, the other courts or royals, and their motivations. That being said, whatever the story lost in those aspects, was more than made up for by the sum of the whole.

An exciting, amusing, romantic, and wonderfully original fantasy novel. 4 stars.