Review: The Prince He Loved
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 27, 2013
I thoroughly enjoyed the world the author created in this book and would definitely enjoy seeing more books set in the same world. The characters were fairly well fleshed out and it was quite easy to become invested in the story.I liked the fact that the author not only told the story from the POV of the two main characters, Raphael and Ice; but also from the POV's of the characters who murdered Raphael's family and took over the government. Instead of just being faceless bad guys, seeing their motivations and thoughts firsthand made them seem even more evil and made me root even harder for the good guys. This isn't a tactic used by many authors and it worked extremely well here.However, there were some big (to me) issues that kept me from rating this book any higher. There were times, especially early on in the book, when the author got so bogged down in minute details that it made the story lag. Conversely, important happenings that dealt with the overall plot were compressed into much shorter sections. For example, there is a place early in the book where the author spends several pages, approximately 175 locations or just over 4 percent of the book, detailing Ice and Raphael's reaction to an outfit Raphael is wearing. That outfit at least had some part in the actual plot of the story, unlike later when the author used 370 locations, nearly 9 percent of the entire length, to detail Ice and Raphael's stay on a backwater planet, a stay that did absolutely nothing to further the plot in the least. Things like this really made the book drag, and made me quite impatient for the author to get to the important stuff--the actual plot. Unfortunately, the author waited until just about 90% of the way in to get to the actual heart of the plot: Raphael's reunion with his sister and their plans to take back their planet. That part, including the implementation of the plans and the aftermath, took 437 locations. Five percent dedicated to an outfit, and ten percent to the heart of the story... that lopsided attention to matters made the ending seem extremely rushed and much more superficial than the rest of the story.It's not that I really minded the attention to detail, because so many books lack that entirely; I just wish the author had taken the time to devote at least as much attention to the important parts of the plot as to the inconsequential bits. It left me wondering if this was intended to be a much longer book but the author just kind of went "oops I need to finish this book today, so I'll just write the most important part in a few pages and get it over with". It was quite a letdown and left me feeling unsatisfied.I will probably try another by this author; because, as I said, the world building is excellent and the characters interesting. But, if this same kind of lopsided storytelling is present again, I won't bother trying any other books beyond that.