Real Review: Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

Link:  Prince of Thorns

Here we have another "Debut of the Year". Fantasy publishers...please stop with that promotional tactic; I'll speak for the whole fanbase: we're sick of it. We don't believe you anymore. Too many of them have turned out disappointing or just outright bad. How about you let us decide what novel is the "Debut of the Year" and stop telling us?

/off of soapbox.

Is "Prince of Thorns" thee one? The "Debut of the Year"? Does Mark Lawrence get a cookie?

No...

Is "Prince of Thorns" good?

Yeah, kind of...

It had some things I didn't like: the age of the main character just isn't believable and seemed like it was there for cheap shock value. It believes that GRITTY IS GOOD, but gritty is neither good nor bad, it's only gritty. As always with a novel using two stories at two different times you have to be sure that both of them are equally good or else the reader will skim...I skimmed the flashbacks here.

It had some things I liked: the world was a future Earth screwed back into a medieval world by catastrophe. I'm always a sucker for those tales and some of the stuff here was pretty good.

It had some things I didn't like about the things I liked: the priests speaking Latin of all languages...the world being so easily medieval instead of even more of a mix than Lawrence showed us.

It had some things I liked about the things I didn't like: despite the age thing I routed for Jorg because as awful as he is...the antagonists are worse.

So no, not DOTY, but not bad.

3 stars.