I have read two other of Ms. Calhoun’s books: Firegold and Aria of the Sea. This volume, The Phoenix Dance, was a companion volume to the latter, but unfortunately I read Aria of the Sea quite a while ago, so all I could remember was that there was a dancer who wanted to be a healer, or perhaps a healer who wanted to be a dancer. (It was the latter.) Luckily, one doesn’t need any knowledge of that work to enjoy this one. Ms. Calhoun has written six novels, to date, and has won the Mythopoeic Award.

Phoenix Dance lives with her three aunts, who are street dancers. She salvages ribbons and buckles and other pretty bits out of the trash behind the shoemaker’s to make shoes for her aunts. One day, she notices an “Apprentice Wanted” sign in the window, and she convinces her aunts that she should be allowed to apprentice with the shoemaker. While working there, twelve pairs of shoes are returned for shoddy workmanship: the twelve pairs belonging to the twelve royal princesses. Every night, the princesses ruin their shoes dancing, and no one knows why. They’re doing badly because of it. Phoenix, having met them, feels badly for them, and decides to find out why and save them.

For the first fifty or so pages of the book, Phoenix is on a tear: she is endlessly creative, has incredible amounts of energy, sleeps very little, and talks up a storm. Many readers will recognize this, as I did, as the ‘mania’ portion of bipolar disorder. They call it the Illness of the Two Kingdoms: the Kingdom of Brilliance (mania) and the Kingdom of Despair (depression). Naturally, after Phoenix’s mania, she goes into despair. There is a healer (the one from Aria of the Sea) who has some rudimentary treatment for the illness; it causes Phoenix to gain weight and makes her skin break out. Because it kills the Kingdom of Brilliance, she feels flat all the time. Eventually she has to come to terms with the fact that she is mentally ill, but it is difficult.

The phoenix is, of course, one of the major symbols of the book. First, Phoenix’s illness makes her rise to flames of brilliance, and then sink to a pile of ash, over and over again. Second, the princesses do the same thing every night: the author describes it as a magically-induced very rapid cycling. Third, Phoenix’s career rises and falls many times, and finally, Phoenix’s family is impoverished nobility that rises from the ashes. The symbolism is pretty heavy-handed, and I’m not 100% sure I agree with the author’s choice to name the main character Phoenix Dance. The name seemed just a little bit too much to me. However, it would have been difficult to work in the idea of the phoenix without her name so close to hand, so I’m not sure how best to do it otherwise.

The interweaving of Phoenix’s story and the fairy tale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses was intricate and multi-layered. The oldest and youngest princesses are well-defined, with such details as the oldest’s desire to become a painter, but that no one takes her seriously because she’s a princess. The youngest princess looks terrible in yellow, but wears it all too often because she gets last pick of what color to wear every day. Phoenix undertakes the task of rescuing the princesses for many reasons, but primarily because she feels sorry for them and wants to help them. There are so many secondary plots that I can’t explain them all. One of the other apprentices wants to be a wizard. Phoenix has a friend who doesn’t approve of her working for the Royals. The country is on the verge of a political revolution. All of these weave together, with the two main plot threads, in such a way to make an amazing story.

It’s heart-wrenching, watching Phoenix’s struggle, and the struggle of the princesses. I am not bipolar (although the author is) and although I have no personal experience with that illness, everything felt real. Readers who have bipolar disorder, I would guess, would find this book a little difficult to read. It is definitely YA, but it easily could be enjoyed by adults and perhaps an enterprising middle-grade reader. Ms. Calhoun’s skill is obvious, and now I want to search out the other couple of her books that I have not read. Recommended for fans of Shannon Hale and Megan Whalen Turner. 5/5 stars.