The Princess 99 is an independently published book that started out online.
The story starts off normal enough: Axel, a farm girl, goes into the city so she can attend Edgewood Academy, a school for wizards (or Crafters as they're called in the book). Then she meet Skye, an alien girl, and things go from weird to nightmarish and crazy from that point on.
In all honesty, it's best described as "What if Harry Potter took place during 1920s New Orleans and aliens were involved?"
The updated print version with reworked spelling and grammar can be purchased for print or download here
or the first draft can be read here for free.
The first book in the series is Bird of Prey.
Not to be confused with Princess Nine.
Tropes used:
- Adaptation Expansion: The print version contains chapters that weren't in the online one, and some extra scenes between other characters as well.
- Animesque : The illustrations in the book seem to range from art nouveau to anime-like to
Nightmare Fuel.
- Blessed with Suck: Pai is kind and sensitive towards other due to his empathy but his sensitivity also gives him nightmarish seizures
- Butt-Monkey Not only does Ambrose get turned into custard, but he ends up naked in front of not only his uncle, but several of Edgewood's students and teachers.
- Genre Deconstruction: The story is full of stock characters for the genre. A Chosen One? Check. Deadpan Snarker for a teacher whose kind of an asshole? Check. A
God-Mode Sue? Check. They go to a Wizarding School and have Mons. However, the Deadpan Snarker is only in that condition because his wife and child died horribly, leaving him an empty shell of a man. Skye's nearly-omnipotent powers don't successfully make life easier or make her happier. Not only that, but the ghosts in the school are not...pleasant like in some other works.
- Meaningful Name: All of the member of Birds of Prey are named after, well, birds of prey except for Axel's codename, The Cuckoo, named after a bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds and takes advantage of the unknowing parents. This fits since Axel is an unknowing killer. Though, Flow does admit that this is "unique" at best.
- Our Time Travel Is Different: Skye, an alien from a far-off future, is said to be stuck in the 1920s-like past.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist : Everyone in the Birds of Prey organization has very good intentions, since they only want civil rights for Muggles, er Nons. Though they try to achieve this in a Tyke-Bomb horrifying manner
