Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112671 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Synopsis
Sally Lockhart's friend and partner-in-adventure Jim Taylor has just solved a mystery. For years he's been searching for Adelaide, the little girl enslaved by toothless crone Mrs Holland in The Ruby in the Smoke. And now he's found her - just as she's about to become a princess. Crown Princess of Razkavia, to be exact, and a princess in danger. Her future husband is desperate to protect his bride, and employs Jim as their bodyguard - Razkavia's quaint little streets are full of danger.

Customer Reviews

I have to say I'm dissappointed with this one
Before I start. I have to say the first three Sally Lockhart books (especially 2 and 3) were absolutly excellent (although I almost refused to read 3 after Phillip Pullmans choice of fate for certain main character!) However after having read The Tiger in the Well (which I struggled to put down) I settled down to The Tin Princess waiting to find out more about the excellent character of Mr Goldberg. Unfortunatly before I had finsihed the first couple of chapters he'd gone off to America taking Miss Lockhart with him!

I really had to force myself through the remainder of the book I'm sorry to say. The plot about mysterious brother the kept me interested enough to finish it but I think the most trying thing about it was how awful the character of Adelaide is. The only time we really heard her speak in privet was to be horrible to poor Becky.

Can we have one about Dan Goldberg or perhaps Harriet please Phillip?

A Ruritanian romance for modern readers
And by "Modern Readers" I mean all those sillys who can't be bothered to try and keep up with old-fashioned prose because they are too desperate to get to the action. Let me assure you from the start that getting to the action will not be a problem in THIS book. On the contrary, the novel opens with a bomb going off in a London suburb.
Becky Winter, hired to teach the "lady of the house" reading, writing and German is not a little surprised that her new employers are a target for anarchists, but she is even more surprised when she finds out that said employer is Crown Prince Rudolf of Razkavia, her native country. Little larger than an English county, it lies between two political giants of late 19th-century Europe: Germany and Austria-Hungary. Both Empires are all too eager to annex Razkavia, for the tin mines there would be very useful in building their armies. And hardly has Becky learned all this than she makes another new acquaintance: Jim Taylor, private detective and current right-hand-man to Prince Rudolf. But Jim's real loyalty lies not with Rudolf but Rudolf's wife: a cockney girl by name of Adelaide, for whom Jim and his best friend Sally Lockhart have been searching for ten years...

Its a good idea to read the first three Sally Lockhart books before you start "Tin Princess": Sally does not play a central role here, but Adelaide and Jim are much more interesting characters if you know about their background. Pullman pits them here against everyone from scheming diplomats to revolutionaries to Bismarck himself (via a pompous chamberlain and a bar brawl or two) - and they are fantastic. So is Pullman's writing: he evokes 19th-century Europe with amazing ease and style, and wonderful comic timing. Adelaide's Cockney English is excellently deployed to get the most laughs out of any situation, no matter how serious, and Jim is always a terrific protagonist (the scene in the cellar captures every aspect of him in three pages, without Pullman once drifting off into long-winded ruminations on his character - simply marvellous). Becky, from whose point of view much of the book is narrated, is also very good. She doesn't have Sally's fire, but then, who does?
It is the extraordinary story of people who are fighting to preserve what they believe in - Razkavia - in the face of overwhelming odds, written with all Pullman's considerable skill and ending with glorious heroism and the sense that the battle may be over, but the war is not. I know most people prefer well-rounded happy-ends, but I love books that - like this one - end with exciting possibilities...

retarded
This book was so darn stupid and boring. I have not read the trilogy, but I already know that its not worth reading. I don't see how it even got published. The only reason that I read the entire book was so that I can talk about the worst book that I have read.