The Runaway King: Ascendance Trilogy, #2 -- Jennifer A. Nielsen
Spoilers about The False Prince are a necessity here. If you haven't read that one, you should: it's twisty-turny-fun-fun-FUN with political intrigue and narrator who is a strict truth-teller but also completely untrustworthy and a great cast of characters and did I mention how much fun it is? It ALSO (deservedly) won a 2012 Cybils award.
THIEVERY! PIRATES! BROKEN BONES! OLD FRIENDS! OLD ENEMIES! OLD FRIENDS WHO ARE NOW ENEMIES! NEW FRIENDS! NEW ENEMIES! LOTS OF ACTION, ADVENTURE, AND SURPRISES! ALSO ROMANCE! I love this series. There's enough information provided at the beginning for new readers to catch up—and for old readers to get reacquainted with the characters and challenges and politics—but I really would suggest beginning at the beginning.
If you haven't read it and you're still reading, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED. (Seriously, shoo! Go read it.)
With the very first line of The Runaway King, Jennifer A. Nielsen reminded my exactly why I enjoyed The False Prince so much:
I had arrived early for my own assassination.
It's just so... JARON-Y: hardboiled, wryly humorous, a little bit self-deprecating and a little bit pompous. The plotting, too, starts with a bang—or, well, a swordfight—and it doesn't slow down once. This isn't a marathon of a book, it's an all-out sprint. As in the first book, many of the chapters end with cliffhanger-y lines like: I was only midway through one of my better curses at him when he raised the sword and crashed it down on my head. It would make for a great read-aloud, and I very much hope that Scholastic got a strong reader for the audiobook, because it deserves one.
I have a few minor complaints. Jaron makes some tactical moves that had me yelling "AUUUUUUUUUUUUGH, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?" and at one point, "NOOOOOOOOO! DON'T EDWARD CULLEN HER, YOU MORON!" (Then again, it's almost always a point in a book's favor if I start yelling at it—it speaks to an exceedingly high level of engagement!) Also, there's a major plot point that hinges on the may-as-well-be-patented Michael Crichton* formula in which, for the entire book, the protagonist tries to remember a crucial piece of information, and 300 pages later, he finally does... JUST IN THE NICK OF TIME. Which I always feel is kind of weak. Finally, as Jaron uses a lot of the same lying-by-telling-the-truth deflection techniques that he used in the first book, his habit of playing his cards super-close occasionally comes off as more obnoxious and smug than entertaining and surprising, but for reals, those are all just petty, minor issues: for the most part, I read the whole thing quite happily. And I totally can't wait for the next one.
I suspect that the basic premise of the first book will tempt some readers to label this trilogy as The Queen's Thief-lite, but I think that's as unfair to Nielsen as it is to label The Hunger Games as a watered-down Battle Royale: they're geared to different audiences, and I wouldn't even say that they're in the same genre, with The Ascendance Trilogy as a throwback to the very same Olde-Fashioned Straight-Up Rip-Roaring Adventures that pundits occasionally proclaim to be extinct, whereas The Queen's Thief started as that same sort of story, but then morphed into a political thriller and a meditation on leadership and service and life-as-an-individual versus life-as-a-political-figure and heck, if you don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know why you're spending time reading this and not headed for your local library RIGHT NOW.
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*Every Michael Crichton book I've ever read uses that formula.
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Author page.
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Book source: Review copy via Netgalley.