Book Review: The False Prince

The False Prince

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Last week, I read this book in six days, and half of it in one (a day well spent). That’s the fastest I’ve read any complete work in…probably since I was required to for a college class three years ago. It was that good.

We follow teenage orphan Sage and his capture into a deadly political game, pitting him against two other boys to be the best, him against his clever capturer, and, well, he’s basically on his own against everyone including the servants.

Thus the weaving of clever and accidental schemes of how a boy who just wants to be himself must put on the most complicated mask in order to survive to the next day. Every page, watching Sage maneuver, succeed, and fail made me wonder how much longer he would last. How much longer he could hold on to being himself.

Certain scenes from this book follow me to my late night thoughts when my mind is free to race, as I mull over the comparison of events as I knew them when reading and as I know them now having finished the book, adding a level of storyplay with reader that makes this one last beyond the final page.

Nielsen’s first book in the Ascendance trilogy is full of layered characters, unexpected twists, and anticipation that will keep you turning the page for more. The False Prince was published in April 2012 and The Runaway King came out less than a year later in March 2013. The third piece to the story, The Shadow Throne, is set to be released in less than six months, March 2014.

I want some time to fully process The False Prince before I pick up the second book, but I can tell you Jennifer Nielsen has a new fan and I intend to continue with her Ascendance Trilogy.

  

The Tipping Point

It's been a long time coming, and once that tipping point arrives, there is no slowing down the follow through. It will come and it will be swift.

I'd been thinking about it for months, did I want to, did I have what it took, could I choose almost blindly, praying for faith at the same time that I exercised it?

The tipping point came when the theoretical turned tangible.


"Norman took the job in Charleston."

I blinked. It was only yesterday that there had been the faintest other possibility, not one that would be great. This, however, was exactly what we'd all been waiting for. Whether or not it was the where we'd been waiting for, well that would remain to be seen.

"He...he got the job?"

Mama nodded. "He just called."

This called for celebration! Finally, a solid tenure track position. They wouldn't have to be moving every year, my brother was getting the beginning of his dream, and more and more I'm hearing how lovely a place South Carolina is.

At the same time that I wanted to jump for joy, my world took a strange nose dive. The kind that a fighter plane takes and builds up speed. It can either swing up out of it with more momentum than ever, or it can stall out, continue to fall, and crash.

The theoretical had just become tangible.

I talked with Mama for a few more minutes about it, plying for answers, though nobody had any real details yet, just the big idea that my brother and his family once again had a new destination for the upcoming school year. Then, bubbling with excitement at all the possibilities, I climbed the stairs and faithfully logged on to Facebook. I sent one private message to two recipients. One word. "YAAAYYYY!"

Then I stepped away, though not far, and wondered how everyone's lives were about to topsy around.

A chime.

I looked. I had a new message.

From my sister-in-law.

"Did you want to come with us?"

I could feel it then, the tipping point, the door of no return, waited in front of me. My plane started diving. I was running out of time to decide.

But I had already decided a few months ago. I just had to work through my process and accept that I wouldn't know all the answers and that it would be okay anyway.

I got my final council from my closest advisor, tearfully admitted that it was what I wanted and it was even hard to say so, and finally accepted.

And then there was no stopping me.