Tamsyn Muir is basically the queen of making you feel slightly uncomfortable while you're having a great time. Most people know her for the "lesbian necromancers in space" vibe of Gideon the Ninth, but if you haven't looked at her novella Princess Floralinda and the Forty Flight Tower, you’re genuinely missing out on one of the sharpest subversions of the "damsel in distress" trope ever written. It’s mean. It’s funny. Honestly, it’s a bit gross in places.
Most fairy tales start with a princess in a tower. You know the drill. She waits. A prince comes. He fights a dragon, or a witch, or maybe just climbs some hair. But what happens when the princes are incompetent? What happens when the tower is actually forty floors of specialized, magical death traps, and the "rescue" is taking way too long?
Floralinda isn't a warrior. She’s a princess in the most traditional, useless sense of the word. At the start of the book, she’s delicate and expects to be saved. But Muir takes that expectation and grinds it into the dirt. This isn't a story about a girl finding her inner strength through a montage; it’s a story about a girl surviving because the alternative is being eaten by a flight-one monster.
The Brutal Reality of the Forty Flight Tower
Let’s talk about the tower itself. It was built by a witch. Not a misunderstood witch, but a genuinely malicious one who wanted to see if anyone could actually make it to the top. The structure is simple: forty floors, each containing a different monster. The monsters get harder as you go down.
Wait. Down?
Yeah, that’s the first thing Muir flips. Floralinda is stuck at the very top. To escape, she has to go down through the levels. Usually, we think of the climb as the struggle. Here, the descent is the nightmare. Every floor represents a new way to die. We're talking golden-eyed hunters, sentient sludge, and things that shouldn't exist.
The early pages of Princess Floralinda and the Forty Flight Tower are a graveyard of dead princes. They keep showing up, trying to be the hero, and getting absolutely slaughtered. It’s grim. Muir describes the carnage with this sort of detached, dark humor that makes you realize just how high the stakes are. Floralinda watches from her window as one after another, these "heroes" fail to even get past the first few floors.
She's alone. Well, almost.
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She has Cobweb. Cobweb is a fairy. If you’re thinking Tinkerbell, stop. Cobweb is a spiteful, tiny, jagged creature who doesn't particularly like Floralinda but is bound to her in a way that forces interaction. Their relationship is the heartbeat of the book. It’s not a friendship. It’s a survival pact fueled by mutual irritation and necessity.
Why the "Damsel" Subversion Works Here
Most "feminist" retellings of fairy tales make the mistake of making the princess instantly awesome. She picks up a sword and suddenly she's Mulan. Muir doesn't do that. Floralinda is pathetic for a long time. She cries. She’s hungry. She’s terrified.
This makes her eventual transformation feel earned. It’s not about magic; it’s about adaptation.
She starts to realize that if she wants to eat, she has to kill. If she wants to move to the next floor, she has to outsmart things that are much stronger than her. There’s a specific scene involving a monster that she has to "defeat" using nothing but her wits and a very limited set of resources, and it’s one of the most harrowing things I’ve read in a novella.
The Evolution of Survival
Floralinda's change is physical, too. Her clothes rot. Her skin gets tough. She loses that "princess" sheen. By the time she hits the middle floors, she isn’t even the same species of person who started at the top.
- Floor 40 to 30: Pure shock. She’s mostly just trying not to starve.
- Floor 30 to 15: Tactical shifts. She starts using the remains of dead princes (armor, weapons, shoes) to her advantage.
- The Final Ten: Total pragmatism. She becomes a predator.
The world-building is tight because it’s so confined. We don't need to know about the kingdom outside. All that matters is the next staircase. Muir uses the "monster of the week" format but compresses it into a claustrophobic, 150-page nightmare.
Tamsyn Muir’s Signature Style
If you've read the Locked Tomb series, you know Muir loves a good "mood." In Princess Floralinda and the Forty Flight Tower, the mood is "grimy glitter." The prose is lush but sharp. She’ll describe a beautiful silk dress and then immediately mention the smell of stagnant water and old blood.
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The dialogue between Floralinda and Cobweb is snappy. It feels modern without using annoying slang. It’s more about the attitude. Cobweb’s cynicism acts as a foil to Floralinda’s fading innocence.
"You're going to die," Cobweb basically says every five minutes.
"Maybe," Floralinda responds, "but I'm going to do it on the next floor."
That’s the vibe. It’s gritty. It’s weirdly inspirational in a "life is a horror movie, so pick up a rock" kind of way.
What People Get Wrong About the Ending
I won't spoil the literal last page, but I will say this: it’s not a "happily ever after" in the way Disney would handle it.
Some readers find the ending of Princess Floralinda and the Forty Flight Tower jarring. They want the princess to return to her throne and lead an army. But Muir is more interested in what trauma does to a person. When you spend forty floors becoming a monster to kill monsters, you don't just "go back" to being a girl who likes embroidery.
The ending is a bit of a gut punch. It challenges the idea that being "saved" is even possible after you've seen what Floralinda has seen. It’s a commentary on the cost of survival. You win, but what’s left of you?
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Practical Takeaways for Fantasy Readers
If you’re looking to dive into this, or if you’ve already read it and want something similar, here’s the deal. This book sits in a very specific niche of "Dark Fairytale Subversion."
1. Don't expect a romance. There isn't one. If you go in looking for a "enemies to lovers" arc between the princess and a prince, you’ll be disappointed because the princes are mostly just snacks for the monsters.
2. Look for the "Gideon" DNA. If you’re a fan of Muir’s other work, look at how she handles the body horror. It’s a precursor to a lot of the themes in Nona the Ninth. The way she views the human body—as something that can be broken, repurposed, and toughened—is all over this novella.
3. Pay attention to the colors. Muir uses color theory in a really subtle way throughout the tower. The shift from the bright, airy top floors to the dark, damp bottom floors mirrors Floralinda's internal state.
4. Read it in one sitting. It’s short. Honestly, the pacing is so frantic that it’s better experienced as a fever dream. If you break it up, you lose that sense of mounting dread.
How to Apply These Themes to Your Own Reading
If you enjoyed the "competence porn" aspect of Floralinda learning to survive, you should check out Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik or The Girl Who Stepped Through Ice. They have that same "girl vs. impossible magical odds" energy.
The main lesson from Princess Floralinda and the Forty Flight Tower? Survival isn't pretty. It’s not a makeover. It’s a series of hard, often disgusting choices.
Next Steps for the Interested Reader:
- Pick up the Subterranean Press edition if you can find it; the illustrations by Juliette Brocal perfectly capture the "cute but deadly" aesthetic of the story.
- Analyze the 'Witch' archetype. After finishing, think about why the witch built the tower. It’s never fully explained, but the implications are fascinating for a second read-through.
- Track the Prince deaths. It sounds morbid, but Muir uses them to signal the increasing difficulty of the floors. It’s a clever bit of narrative shorthand.
This isn't just a story about a tower. It’s a story about what’s left when the fairy tale disappears and you’re just a person who refuses to die. Go read it. It’s short, it’s mean, and it’s brilliant.