Review: Verónica: A Musketeer’s Story by Jody Studdard

A rip-roaring adventure about the life and times of the first female Musketeer, Jody Studdard’s middle-grade novel Verónica: A Musketeer’s Story is sure to enchant and inspire readers of all ages.

Eighteen-year-old Verónica Espinosa hails from a family of top-notch male matador champions, so she has a lot to prove as a young woman in the ring. After a poor showing during a bullfight, she flees her home in shame and disgrace, fearing that she has dishonored her relatives. She wanders from place to place, meeting nasty banditos, exploring ancient pyramids, conversing with fortune tellers and spirits, and trying her hand at ballet.

Eventually, her journey leads her to the Musketeers – an elite all-male organization of personal guards to the king. Verónica shows off her expert dueling and swordplay skills and is allowed to join the Musketeers as the first woman member, where she quickly makes three close friends in the guard – Jean-Luc, Jules, and Joseph – and the merry band sets off on various risky assignments, often involving apprehending thieves who’ve escaped in a recent prison break.

Unbeknownst to the Musketeers, the king’s jealous younger brother – a dangerous sorcerer named Étienne – is the culprit behind the getaway, and he’s got a dastardly magical plan to take the throne for himself. Verónica and her fellow Musketeers will have to be bold and resourceful if they want to protect the king. Meanwhile, Verónica is still grappling with internal issues of her own: does she want to be a runaway forever, or does she want to return home and confront the family she suddenly left behind?

Verónica is a thrilling book with a strong female lead who’s not afraid to criticize and stand up to her male counterparts. Author Jody Studdard nails the tough balance between long and short plot arcs, smoothly managing the wider revenge story alongside smaller, more episodic capers. Sometimes the Musketeer mission sections can feel repetitive, especially when a number of them are placed in a row, but at their best, these passages read like dramatic D&D or video game quests.

Perhaps most impressive is the novel’s creative fantasy world-building, which includes riding unicorns, encountering dinosaurs, and meeting camouflaged messenger birds called skyhawks. Author Studdard even has the main characters time travel into the past, and at one point, Étienne is transported to a fictional world within the novel. All of this may come as a surprise from just the title and cover, which suggests a work of history rathter than such high fantasy. The protagonist also feels slightly old for the intended age range of the novel, as the book is aimed at middle-grade readers, although the text certainly has crossover appeal for older audiences, given Verónica’s age.

On that front, the book would also be an excellent tool for introductory language learning, as Studdard has smartly based places in the novel’s imaginary world on real-life countries. The book is peppered with basic Spanish, Italian, and French vocabulary words and translations, and there’s a comprehensive appendix of all the terms and definitions at the end of the novel, for an immersive story in both this world and Studdard’s fantasy realm.

All told, Verónica is both a compelling nod to the original Three Musketeers and a completely innovative book all its own, which will have readers cheering for more adventures from this charming heroine.