A satisfying romantic fantasy that should please fans of the first book in the series.
A Fae prince journeys to the human world to secure a bride but gets more than he bargained for in Leech’s sequel to The Dark Prince (2015, etc.).
Prince Corin Albrecht of Alfheim is a broken man. Losing his beloved Océane to his best friend, Laen, devastated him, and he dulls his heartache by womanizing and drinking himself into oblivion. His dissolute lifestyle is a source of consternation to his mother, Queen Audrianne, who’s desperate for him to start acting like a future king. She issues him an ultimatum: either he finds a wife or she will force him to enter into an arranged marriage. Unwilling to accept his mother’s choice of a bride, he travels from the Fae world to the mortal one in search of a young woman named Claudette, whom he’s heard about from friends of friends. She’s his ideal wife—sweet, innocent, and easily manipulated; if he can cajole her into accepting three gifts, she will be bound to him forever. Claudette is completely besotted with Corin, despite warnings that he has a dangerous side. His cold, calculated seduction soon turns into something deeper as he realizes he’s fallen in love with her. He desires her love and trust, but his secrets could have devastating, far-reaching consequences. Leech’s sequel expands the Fae world that she introduced in The Dark Prince and introduces a dynamic new heroine. Here, the focus shifts to Prince Corin, showing him to be a man of intractable contradictions. He may have unscrupulous motives for courting Claudette, but he’s not without a conscience, and this tension turns a character who could have been a shallow cad into an intriguing, if tormented, hero. He has a solid foil in Claudette, a sensitive, earnest young woman who seeks to make a difference in the world. Her journey to the Fae lands also allows Leech to introduce the Fae history and the fanciful creatures that once roamed the landscape.
A satisfying romantic fantasy that should please fans of the first book in the series.Pub Date: April 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5227-0800-1
Page Count: 522
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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