The parents were grieving, and their grief was terrible to bear. Both because of the depth and sharpness of their sadness, and because I knew that if anything horrible ever happened to me or Tom, our mother would never grieve for us that way.

I wasn’t sure she would grieve for us at all.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Welcome back! Slowly but surely I am making my way through my NetGalley queue – this one was posted there quite a while ago but was only published last month. The Piper’s Promise is the third entry in Leah Cypress’ Sisters Ever After series, a collection of stories about the younger siblings of famous fantasy characters. Previous titles include retellings of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, with a future one focusing on Beauty and the Beast. Each of the previous links takes you to each book’s individual entry as well as the series page.

The Piper’s Promise is a retelling of the Pied Piper fairy tale. In case you’re not familiar, a person in very colorful clothing steals the children of Hamelin after their mayor refuses to pay for his completed rat removal services (check out the Wikipedia article for the full fascinating story behind this myth!). Retellings diverge on whether the children disappeared, drowned, or were eventually returned – high stakes for this story! Let’s dive further in below.

The Good Stuff

Clare, our main character, is the younger sister of the Pied Piper, who we find out later is named Tom. Over the course of the story we learn about their past as siblings and how they were lured into the Faerie Realms and were raised by the Faerie Queen herself to become servants and human world-Faerie Realms double agents. Clare and Anna, a human her age from Hamelin, partner up to clear Tom’s name and figure out how to save the children of Hamelin from being lost forever.

I went in to The Piper’s Promise not knowing it was a part of the Sisters Ever After series. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it ended up being fun! Cypress’ character additions or expansions in the bounds of the story were really interesting. Older renditions of the story include disabled children who were left behind by the Piper and other children so that they could tell the adults of Hamelin what happened – Cypress uses this detail effectively for Anna’s character. Anna is the mayor’s daughter and is low-vision, which was a nice bit of representation. She proves herself consistently throughout the story to be more than capable of holding her own against creatures mythical and mundane.

Tom as a character was also really interesting; Cypress makes his and Clare’s relationship complex and intriguing in a way that’ll hold the reader’s attention throughout the book. Cypress builds the story while revealing their childhood in the Faerie Realms, so we learn that Clare and Tom have not had an easy time being the human children of the Faerie Queen. This comes into play throughout the story and adds a satisfying closure element to the end and the epilogue. Cypress’ writing makes it fairly straightforward as well, so readers who might find this book challenging won’t miss out on any of the story.

My only note about this is that all of the characters read as white. Cypress doesn’t describe the characters really in detail, letting the reader fall into the default of white. The cover images of this and all of her books so far imply the same. This isn’t a dealbreaker and many kids will likely still enjoy this story and the series it comes from, but it is something to point out for those of us that have a lot of patrons from marginalized backgrounds. Given that we had the fabulous Artie and the Wolf Moon recently, I find that it’s important to recognize whiteness-as-default and call it out when you can. Kids of all ethnicities and backgrounds deserve to see themselves reflected in stories like this one!

In Summary

Despite my note of criticism at the end, this was overall an enjoyable read. This will be one to recommend for folks jumping into longer and more complex chapter books and, as a series, will get them hooked. For that, this book is recommended.

The Piper’s Promise is the third in Leah Cypress’ Sisters Ever After series. It’s published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House Publishers. You can purchase it from the publisher here. As always, gichi miigwech for reading!