(3.5 stars; I round up) 
 An interesting retelling of the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. To be honest, I'm not overly familiar with the original tale--I've mostly just heard the premise: twelve princesses are doomed to dance because of some curse, and only true love or some such can save them. Really, you don't even need to know it's based on another tale to enjoy the story. 
 One thing I really liked about this fairy tale retelling was the setting. Usually you see fairy tales set some time between the middle ages and the Elizabethan (Shakespeare's) era, but this one was more like the Victorian era or perhaps even as late as the early 1900s, and not even for steampunk reasons. That's pretty rare for fairy tale retellings in my experience. The world was based on Europe, called Ionia here, and the main story was set in a fictionalized Germany-inspired country (called Westfalin) and used German names, going so far as including a pronunciation guide to remind you that Ws are Vs and such. I don't read too many books set in Germany, let alone fantasy, so this was a nice new experience for me. 
 Now, for the cons. Honestly, the writing style didn't really appeal to me. It served its purpose, but sometimes it felt clunky and distant due to the old-timey air it was trying to force. Another thing I didn't care for was just how thrown into the story I felt. Or maybe the beginning just didn't feel very compelling to me? Either way, it took a while for me to connect to the story, and even when I did, I was still at a distance. Mostly because there were so many characters flying about, but it's hard to fault a book for that when its premise requires 12 different princesses. 
 Overall, the story was great, and the only thing holding me back from rating it higher is the issues I had with getting caught up in the story.