Prince of Thorns

Title: Prince of Thorns

Author: Mark Lawrence

Publisher: ACE

Series: Broken Empire, Bk 1

ISBN: 9781101543290

Pages: 298

Obtained: Library ebook copy

Comments:

I saw a pic of this book on The Bookish Outsider's "It's Monday! What Are You Reading?" post and was instantly drawn in by the title and cover.  Reading a brief blurb about it decided me.  I checked out the an ebook version from my library and that was that.

Prince of Thorns is horrible.  In a good way.  I think.  Within the first chapter, the main character (then a 13 year old boy) is encouraging and participating in murder and rape.  And to make it worse (yes, worse), it's in first person so you can feel the lack of caring, compassion, love.  Yes, I tend to like books with assassins, but this was even different from that.  Men, women, children.  The innocent and harmless.  He and his fellows murdered them all.  IRL I'm pro-life, which includes being anti-capital punishment.  Which means even legal execution of criminals is abhorrent to me.  And this was full-on murder.  And rape.  Just the word rape makes my stomach turn.  So you may be wondering, if it was so horrible, why did I keep reading?

The writing was just that good.  I was captured by the story.  Despite how incredibly dark both the overall story and Jorg are, I wanted to know more.  I hesitate to say much more, lest I give too much away.

But the second book, King of Thorns, is due out this August (less than a month!) and I definitely plan on reading it.  Hopefully it will capture me like the first did.