The Child Prince

‘She'd never kidnapped a prince before, but she had snuck into a sorcerer's tower and “borrowed” his familiar. Surely it would be similar?'

This is such a fun book. Sevana Warran is absolutely wonderful - and I really wish the entire book had been told from her perspective (instead of sharing, as she does, with Bellomi).

‘If not for the fact that childhood friends were rather difficult to replace, she would have strangled him and buried his body in the woods years ago.'

Sevana is pretty much a hermit, she deals with people, but only to stave off boredom and earn money. Her closest companions are a mountain and a mountain lion. She's sarcastic and has this wonderful dry wit and I adore her for it.

‘Sevana had said the mountain spoke with the wind, right? Right. So that wasn't a ghost whispering in his ear. Right. Nothing to be worried about. This was all...well, normal would be pushing it.'

Bellomi is much more difficult to pin down. As the heir to the throne, and considering the last ten years of his life, he has little people skills. Which makes putting him with Sevana a sight to behold. He definitely does a lot of growing (literally and figuratively) through the course of the story.

‘“You see, Bel, the man in front of you is infamous for having been hit with the Sleeping Princess curse.”‘

The other characters in the story are great, too. I adore them all but...honestly, when I first started this book, I was so happy to not feel any hints of romance. But, of course, that was too good to last. There is a romance in this book. Though it's not the main focus, several conversations are had about it and how it would change things. As a whole, I didn't mind, but it came awfully close to being too sweet of a romance for me.

‘“If she does accidentally kill you, she'll revive you almost immediately.”‘

I love - absolutely LOVE - the magic in this story. It draws on artificers more than it does your typical sorcerers, with combining things to make magic. I'd love to tell you more, and, believe me, I could, but part of the fun for me was learning about the magic system and how magic in the world behaves.

On a related note, this book features a couple of dragons as minor characters. I also LOVE the depiction of dragons here. Love so, so much.

‘“Never rile up Sev or try to limit her. She'll do the most insane things to prove you wrong.”‘

The plot isn't the story's strong point. I can forgive that. Other people might not. This story has an obvious end point and there's not a lot of surprises along the way. It's just a fun, fairly straight forward story about reclaiming a kingdom and the hilarious personalities that are met along the way.

‘“This woman chortles like an evil witch when she's contemplating mayhem. I can totally see her setting someone on fire and enjoying every second of it.”‘

The only slight complaint I had is that there are a few typos. The most common ones are obviously formatting issues, but there's also a couple times that words seemed to have been a little mixed up.

(Originally posted on my blog: http://pagesofstarlight.blogspot.com/)