(Crown of Shards #2)
Publication
Date: July 2, 2019
Paperback, 448 pages, Harper Voyager
Genres:
Adult, Fantasy
Everleigh Blair might be the new
gladiator queen of Bellona, but her problems are far from over.
First, Evie has to deal with a
court full of arrogant, demanding nobles, all of whom want to get their greedy
hands on her crown. As if that wasn’t bad enough, an assassin tries to kill
Evie in her own throne room.
Despite the dangers, Evie goes
ahead with a scheduled trip to the neighboring kingdom of Andvari in order to
secure a desperately needed alliance. But complicating matters is the stubborn
Andvarian king, who wants to punish Evie for the deaths of his countrymen
during the Seven Spire massacre.
But dark forces are at work inside
the Andvarian palace, and Evie soon realizes that no one is safe. Worse, Evie’s
immunity to magic starts acting in strange, unexpected ways, which makes her
wonder whether she is truly strong enough to be a Winter Queen.
But Evie’s magic, life, and crown
aren’t the only things in danger—so is her heart, thanks to Lucas Sullivan, the
Andvarian king’s bastard son and Evie’s . . . well, Evie isn’t quite sure what
Sullivan is to her.
Only one thing is
certain—protecting a prince might be even harder than killing a queen…
My Review
I said that Kill the Queen was a mix of Ella
Enchanted and Victoria Aveyard's Red Queen series, and the same could be
said for Protect the Prince. But there’s also some Reign—the CW TV
show based on Mary, Queen of Scots—in there too. There’s a lot of court
scheming and kind-of-cheesy costumes and dialogue.
Protect the Prince is
a good sequel. It gave me some of the things I was missing in the first book:
relationships between characters and slightly more character development.
However, I still think Estep could do well with learning how to expand her side
characters’ backgrounds and voices. Even romance partners. She has a bad habit
in all of her books of only having the protagonist seem like a fully-fledged person.
So yes, I would seriously love some more character development for Lucas,
Paloma, Serilda, etc. I think even Maeven got more character development than
they all did. Which is kind of disappointing.
Unfortunately, the bad guy plot twist at the end was
unbelievably obvious. That sore spot didn’t prevent me from reading the rest,
but it did cause me to roll my eyes sometimes at how obtuse Everleigh was
being. Also, random thing, but “Sully” is such a weird nickname for a male
hero/love interest. It reminds me of Monsters Inc. It really took me out of the
story every time Everleigh called Lucas that. At least call him Sullivan. Or
even Sulls would have been better. Yeesh.
Like with book one, I have complaints for this series, but Protect
the Prince is still a quick, fun read. If you’re new to adult fantasy, or fantasy
in general, this book is an easy introduction. And, if you love hard fantasy,
but need something lighter, I think you could read this one and only have a few
problems with it.
*Note: I purchased
a copy of this book myself. This in no way affected my opinion/review.
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