Nobody’s Princess
Nobody’s Prize
Esther Friesner
Random House, 2008, 2009

“I want to learn how to fight!” cries young teenager Helen of Sparta in Nobody’s Princess, the first volume of Esther Friesner’s smart, charming, utterly winning revisiting of the Helen of Troy myth (the second volume is Nobody’s Prize, and so far there’s been no third). “Even if I never use a sword, I want to know how. When I’m queen, I’ve got to be strong enough to protect myself. If I can’t do that, how can I protect anyone else? And if someone thinks he can control my life and my decisions just because he’s got a sword and I don’t –– I want him to get a surprise World’s Greatest Dad buy .”

He’s not the only one! In these two books, Friesner gives us a spirited young Helen trying her hardest to take her destiny in her own hands and carve her own path through life (not knowing as much of Greek mythology as we do, she’s optimistic enough to think this is possible). Along the way, she has to deal with clueless but well-meaning adults, meddlesome and overprotective brothers (Castor and Polydeuces are done well enough to make this reader want to see them in some book of their own), and a cast of characters right out of Bulfinch –– including a loutish bad boy named Theseus, who’s not without charms.

Friesner expertly balances her stories between immediate, unapologetically visceral scenes of Helen’s present (“Bronze chopped flesh and bone and the coppery smell of blood choked the air –– would the songs to come call these men heroes or butchers?”) and lines designed to play on our greater knowledge of the tragedies that lie in store for Helen (“How can a contest between three goddesses have anything to do with me?”). In Nobody’s Princess and Nobody’s Prize, we get Helen-eye-views of the fabled Caledonian Boar Hunt and the Quest for the Golden Fleece (on the latter, she disguises herself as a boy in order to accompany Jason & Co).

And why is any of this surprising? Because before she began dabbling in teen fiction, Friesner wrote, edited –– perpetrated? –– some books that, shall we say, didn’t exactly showcase great values for female readers. Chicks in Chain Mail, Did You Say Chicks? and, sigh, The Chick is in the Mail were, it’s true, aimed at the adult fantasy-fiction audience, but they still constitute some fairly grave sins against the sentiments of intelligent sisterhood.

If books like Nobody’s Princess and Nobody’s Prize represent some kind of atonement, by all means let’s have more of them.

—Leah Lambrusco