A kingdom teetering on the brink of destruction. A king gone missing. Who will survive? Find out in the highly anticipated sequel to Jennifer A. Nielsen's blockbuster THE FALSE PRINCE!
Just weeks after Jaron has taken the throne, an assassination attempt forces him into a deadly situation. Rumors of a coming war are winding their way between the castle walls, and Jaron feels the pressure quietly mounting within Carthya. Soon, it becomes clear that deserting the kingdom may be his only hope of saving it. But the further Jaron is forced to run from his identity, the more he wonders if it is possible to go too far. Will he ever be able to return home again? Or will he have to sacrifice his own life in order to save his kingdom?
The stunning second installment of The Ascendance Trilogy takes readers on a roller-coaster ride of treason and murder, thrills and peril, as they journey with the Runaway King!
My Rating: *****
Warning! If you haven't read The False Prince yet, read no further!!! Spoilers are inevitable.
Copy provided for review by NetGalley. Thank you!
Ok. Woah. This sequel blew me away. I was really excited to read it and really worried that it couldn't live up to my love for The False Prince, which was awesome partly because of Sage's big reveal about his real identity. That out of the way, how could The Runaway King live up? But it does.
It's successful because the adventure is so much bigger. The False Prince's action was contained in one setting, but in The Runaway King we actually get to see more of Jaron's kingdom, and what's going on is not pretty. There's all sorts of courtly intrigue ramping up the action and there's no way to know who to trust (a feature I always love in a book :D).
And Jaron has not changed (or at least not for the worst). He's still impulsive and ridiculously clever and Sherlock-ian observant and sometimes foolish, but any time he does something I consider stupid, it's revealed later that he knew exactly what he was doing and I have to declare him a genius. And his awesome thief skills are on full display in this book. Plus! PIRATES!!! As if this book needed any more coolness.
The final resolution is a little bit deus ex machina and I'm not sure I totally trust a certain character's almost complete turn around, but we'll see. And something's got to happen with the romance. There's NO WAY it can end up the way it just did. Can't wait to read the final book in this trilogy!
Recommended for: Fans of courtly intrigue, action/adventure, awesome thieves (reminds me often of Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series), and a very entertaining story.
The Runaway King is out tomorrow!
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