Mostly fantasy

Old-school fantasy, immersive audiobook

Revisado: 05-02-21 El oyente recibió este título gratis

Note: I received an audiobook version of the book from the author in exchange for an unbiased review. My thoughts on the audiobook narration are included at the bottom of this review. I have read the book in audio form only.

3.5 stars

This book will surely appeal to fans of old-school swords and sorcery. It has plenty of action, some of it gory, as well as some exciting magic, and not one but two castle sieges. Though it doesn’t break any new ground, it tells its story well, though I was a bit put off by the “To be continued” ending, which leaves the main climax unresolved.
The narrative is quite complex, following a large cast of characters, from heroes to villains to those in between. Fuller handles the plot complexities deftly, though the switches in POV within chapters are not to my taste. This is a writer who knows the story he wants to tell, and how he wants to tell it, and is not afraid of side quests, as long as they serve the larger narrative. As someone who tends not to read a lot of epic fantasy, I struggled at times with the number and length of the various threads, though they did always intersect in interesting ways.

The central plot involves, as the title suggests, a false prince, or rather, a wizard disguised as a prince, and the struggle of our main protagonist, a young wizard named Meath, to help princess Nicolette uncover the ruse and right the line of succession. Barbarians, who are often referred to as “savages,” threaten the kingdom, and their assaults on the castles make for some exciting action. There is an interesting side character named Shania, a barbarian who ends up with the good guys, who can hold her own in a fight, and becomes a love interest as well. My favorite character was Ursa, the wizard to whom Meath is apprenticed, who is wise and powerful, but with clear limits to his power. The magic system is fairly traditional, but it is well done, and balanced; though there are mighty magics afoot, none of them are all-powerful, and it takes a combination of bravery, skill with arms, and magic to win the day.

The fighting scenes, and especially the sieges, were a strength of the book, if you’re into that sort of thing. There were plenty of entrails spilled, countless throats cut, heads (and hands) cut off, in battles both small and large scale. The sieges included a nice combination of large-scale combat and individual acts of valor, as well as some nifty uses of magic to turn the tides of the battles. And one of the sieges had some impressive surprises for me as a reader, which I absolutely did not expect, so hats off for that.

There were aspects of this book that were too traditional for me. It is a fairly straightforward line-of-succession drama, with the bloodlines of the kingdom under threat from the evil usurper and the barbarian hordes aligned with him. There are romance arcs, which also tend toward the traditional, and though we don’t know for sure by the end of the book how they will end, we have some ideas. The magic system, while well done, isn’t particularly novel. The fairly clean divide of good vs evil, with the barbarians (Shania aside) being cast in the latter role, did not sit well with me, but it is perfectly in keeping with the old-school feel of the book.

I want to talk about the ending. Without giving any spoilers, the last line is: “To be continued.” I was really shocked when I got to that point, as I thought things were winding up toward a conclusion, but then it just…ended, leaving the main conflict unresolved. This is the main ding for the book, for me—the lack of a complete story. Even in a series, I want at least one major plot point wrapped up in the first book, and while some minor plots were resolved, the main one was not.

If you’re looking for fantasy that breaks new ground, that challenges your notions of social norms, this book will not be for you. But if you want a well-told tale of classic swords and sorcery to get lost in, you will love James Fuller’s The False Prince.

Now, on to the audiobook narration. This one is going to be quite polarizing, as it’s a highly dramatic affair, like a radio play, complete with sound effects, background music, and one voice actor playing all the roles. I know some people are going to eat this up, but it really took me a while to get used to it. To be honest, the audio narration almost made this a DNF for me, but the story was interesting enough that I powered through, and after a while I made my peace with it. The narration felt overly dramatic to me, which often got in the way of my enjoyment of the story. And though I appreciate the narrator’s talents—and let me be clear, this is an actor with an impressive range and skillset—I found some of the representations of female voices to be very off-putting, a kind of breathy falsetto that grated me every time they spoke.

Some audio readers will love the style—the sound effects and dramatic reading style could make it quite immersive, but it did not work well for me.

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