Book: Pennyroyal Academy

Here's the first 2016/7 Mark Twain Award nominee I've read - Pennyroyal Academy.  Despite it breaking a couple of my rules for personal book selection (It's from my least favorite genre, fantasy, and it already has sequels.  Not only that, but it unoriginally takes characters from other sources.), I actually enjoyed reading it.  Author M. A. Larson put together some great word descriptions and didn't hold back on some difficult, or at least regional, vocabulary.  Larson definitely has a handle on the craft and the art of writing.

From the book's website:

A girl from the forest arrives in a bustling kingdom with no name and no idea why she is there, only to find herself at the center of a world at war. She enlists at Pennyroyal Academy, where princesses and knights are trained to battle the two great menaces of the day: witches and dragons. There, given the name “Evie,” she must endure a harsh training regimen under the steel glare of her Fairy Drillsergeant, while also navigating an entirely new world of friends and enemies. As Evie learns what it truly means to be a princess, she realizes surprising things about herself and her family, about human compassion and inhuman cruelty. And with the witch forces moving nearer, she discovers that the war between princesses and witches is much more personal than she could ever have imagined.