rebel prince

The Rebel Prince is the third in The Moorehawke Trilogy by Celine Kiernan, which brings this trilogy to a compact and quiet conclusion. In doing my internet poking-about in preparation for this, I was interested to see that Kiernan is working on a web comic version of the story and is quite a talented artist. The fact that she has to pare the story down so that it fits into the comic format is telling in my mind when considering how she was able to truncate what could have been a very prolonged finale to the trilogy. Once an author has that many balls in the air, and can be tricky to extricate one's self from a story without feeling like you need to satisfy every little urge and need. christopher paolini, i'm looking at you. I was glad to see that Kiernan was able to let a couple of those balls drop in the interest of brevity.

 I can't say that this was my favorite fantasy story but it was fun to read, and its clearly written for the YA set, and will appeal to those who enjoy a fun fantasy story with a fair amount of action and a touch of romance. Some of this sub-plots, like the ghosts and the talking cats seemed a little tacked on in the end, by which I mean that the story would have been the same with or without them. It left me feeling like there was more to it that I just didn't hear about. While I'm grousing, I will also say that the main character was kept in the dark about a lot of things, for a long time, and I had to suffer along with her. Once I found out, I wasn't sure the secrets that were being kept from her really warranted so much cloak and dagger. This ended up accentuating this young woman's feelings of being left out of matters that were perhaps above her station--certainly things being discussed by men in most cases--and it may have been the author's intent to point this out.

Now on to some classic smut: Sons & Lovers by D. H. Lawrence for Banned Books Week!