Confined to their dreary castle while mourning their mother's death, Princess Azalea and her eleven sisters join The Keeper, who is trapped in a magic passageway, in a nightly dance that soon becomes nightmarish.
Heather Dixon's retelling of the classic fairy tale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" creates a richly build world with plentiful dark corners. The eldest of twelve princesses, Azalea is left in desperate straits when her mother dies and her father, the King, abandons his daughters for grief and war. With strict instructions that they don black and give up frivolous activities, the princesses are at a loss. They love dancing, and Azalea's discovery of a secret passageway to a silver forest where the girls can dance to their hearts' content is thrilling. However, a sinister man called the Keeper allows them entrance, and his sympathy for their plight soon transforms into something much more frightening.
- Genre: Juvenile Fiction
- Subgenre: General, Fairy Tales + Folklore / Adaptations, Science Fiction + Fantasy + Magic, Girls + Women
- Age: Teen
- Publisher: Greenwillow
- Pages: 472
- Language: English
- Format: hardcover
- Release Date: March 29, 2011
- Date Published: March 29, 2011
- Author: Heather Dixon