The Book Landers: Book Review: The False Prince

Title: The False Prince

Author: Jennifer A Nielsen

Genre: Fantasy

Book Blurb:

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.

Review:

I think I have been blessed by the book gods recently because I seem to be on a reading-awesome-books streak :-)

I absolutely adored The False Prince, and it surpassed my expectations, even though I already had high expectations for this book thanks to raving recommendations from my good friends Sofia at Loving the Language of Literature, Nath of Codes and Writes and LilaJune from LilaJune's Book Saloon. Wow...the main character, Sage, just wow....mind=blown.

I'm going to dedicate a whole paragraph to Sage, a character who is quite more than he seems *wink wink nudge nudge to those of you who have already read the book...* I loved his character integrity (though I doubt many of his associates would agree with me on that one.) I also love his attitude. I mean, the sass he dishes out is unreal!

But sass aside, Sage is a character who constantly keeps on surprising me. With every choice he makes, it becomes clearer that his morals are much higher than that of a liar or thief. In many ways, he reminds me of Day from Legend and Han from The Demon King. Under normal circumstances, I feel like a character with as much sass as Sage would really put me off, but somehow Neilsen manages to pull it off with Sage. She really is an amazing author!

And the plot--omg--sooo good! I did not see a major plot twist coming, and even if I had, I still would've loved this book to death. The action was constantly nonstop. Just to give you a sense of how each page leaves you frantically flipping to the edge, I decided to burn the midnight oil and give up sleep to finish The False Prince. I got home from work and decided to go to bed early because I was exhausted (busy night) and needed to get up early tomorrow morning. Well, I decided to read a few chapters of The False Prince before turning out the lights. Yeah right...who am I kidding? The False Prince is like a freakin' bag of chips...you can't just have one (or in this case, a few chapters.) The gif below is a metaphor of me devouring this book :-)