Book Review: The Runaway King

This is the 2nd book in the Ascendancy Series.

In the first “A False Prince” the Duke takes 3 orphans to try to train one up to take the throne.

In the second, the King runs away to

I don’t want to spoil the plot, but this first person narrative is character driven, giving the author a personalized view of the politicking and shennanigans of the court. I am overtly impressed with the smart plot, ongoing character development (YAY character development) and interesting relationships that are not only about romantic interests.

Here is the thing, the politics are tricky…the “best” course of action is not the safest (or safe at all), so it has to do not only with self-sacrifice but the realities of the intricacies of political intrigue…..All of which means that the hero has to be pretty tricksy to get around all of that!

Huge plus, the main character is wry, making the book itself wry!

Genre Matches: I have my own unique way of looking at genre. A lot of it has to do with the TONE of a book, as well as the broad categories i.e. Fantasy.

Can’t wait for the third book!

so much so, I’m actually re-reading it now.

This book’s TONE and Genre was very reminincance of Mehan Whalen Turner’s “Queen’s Thief” series. Again, I think these are NOT copycat series, just two very well written series that show different versions of genre, tone and characterization.

Another good series for wryness (with first character voice narrative) is Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Series, a little less disguise/court-intrigue oriented, so its not a genre match, but I would say that if you like the tone of The Runaway King I would definitely check out Wrede and Turner

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Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

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