Like Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom,
this book promptly went from my reading
stack to my little brother’s.
In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people,
Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator
of the king's long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are
recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage
knows that Conner's motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on
a sword's point -- he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be
killed. But Sage's rivals have their own agendas as well.
As Sage moves from a rundown orphanage to Conner's sumptuous palace, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally, a truth is revealed that, in the end, may very well prove more dangerous than all of the lies taken together.
As Sage moves from a rundown orphanage to Conner's sumptuous palace, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally, a truth is revealed that, in the end, may very well prove more dangerous than all of the lies taken together.
The
narrator, Sage, was the best part of this book. His voice was not only funny,
but unique; he’s usually a step ahead of all the other characters, and the reader. He keeps secrets, from
them and us. He threads us along in the
best of ways, parceling out info on himself a bit at a time, never really lying to us, but surprising us all the
same. Sage is a master of omission.
He’s a
likable character, who’ll have you rooting for him from the very start. And
yet, in my opinion, things sometimes came a bit too easily for him. Some minor characters favored him (and started
helping him) almost immediately, but the ‘why’ was never fleshed out as much as
I’d have liked.
One
other thing: If the back-of-the-book summary has you expecting diligent
etiquette/fencing/horse-back-riding/book-learnin’ PRINCE lessons… Well. They’re
there, but the participants aren’t so diligent.
Considering they’re training to convince
a kingdom that they’re a lost prince, and competing
with other boys who have the same goal, and facing death if they fail, sometimes they don’t take it that seriously.
There are a few instances of them being kept
from their lessons by the one orchestrating the whole thing.
I’m not saying I’d have loved fifty
pages detailing royal table settings. But the way the lessons are treated in
this book struck me as a teensy bit implausible; even the lessons we see are
mostly skimmed over. It’s as if they’re present because we expect them to be present, yet they aren’t really necessary.
Bottom line… If you’re looking for
something reminiscent of the “I Can Learn to Do It” number in the Anastasia
movie, this may not live up to your expectations.
Still. Sage is a fun narrator, and
his antics and schemes and occasionally-noble nature were more than enough to
make me pass The False Prince on to
my brother.
For everything else, there’s
Youtube.
If you’ve read The False Prince, what
did you think? And what are you reading now?
That sounds really interesting! I love narrators who keep secrets from the reader.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was really refreshing. ^^ Lots of places where you think you know what's going on--until you don't. XD
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