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spiffybumble 's review for:
The Runaway King
by Jennifer A. Nielsen
The Runaway King: 4.5/10
By: Jennifer Nielsen
The Runaway King is a story about a boy making stupid decisions that end up harming the people around him and somehow everything is perfectly fine in the end and he is better for it.
I did not finish my first attempt at reading The Runaway King, originally I believed this to be because of the timing of everything in life and school when I first picked up the novel, now I realize it was not that. You could easily read this book in a single day, it’s incredibly light. What prevented me from reading it the first time around was just how horribly the main character treats his friends and family.
If someone were to read this book without reading the first one, they might very much enjoy it, but the first book, The False Prince, is actually in my favorites list. It is very very good and part of where that good comes from is the main character, Sage, is a scrappy underdog fighting even when he knows he’s going to get beat for it. The problem with it, is that at the end of the first book, you feel like Sage has really grown up and evolved. Then, at the start of The Runaway King, you realize that he hasn’t grown up at all and that same scrappy attitude of fighting even when you know you’re going to get beat goes from admirable to obnoxious now that he sits on a pile of everything at his fingertips. The book seems to want to make me hate the character by having him push away all and any ancillary characters that show any sympathy or goodness to him.
I may be acting too harshly due to my having such a high affinity for the first novel, but I just had such a hard time with The Runaway King, and the worst part is that I acknowledge it is still a well-written book. Sure, it’s all action and no purple prose but that’s a really good thing in middle-grade fiction. There’s always something happening, and there’s enough hooks at the end of chapters to make you want to look at what is happening on the next page, but the character growth just isn’t there for me.
I will still likely read the third novel out of the proddings of my friends, but if it were purely up to me, I doubt I would have gotten past the first book. But if this book is for you, than I am glad for you! It is unfortunately not for me.
By: Jennifer Nielsen
The Runaway King is a story about a boy making stupid decisions that end up harming the people around him and somehow everything is perfectly fine in the end and he is better for it.
I did not finish my first attempt at reading The Runaway King, originally I believed this to be because of the timing of everything in life and school when I first picked up the novel, now I realize it was not that. You could easily read this book in a single day, it’s incredibly light. What prevented me from reading it the first time around was just how horribly the main character treats his friends and family.
If someone were to read this book without reading the first one, they might very much enjoy it, but the first book, The False Prince, is actually in my favorites list. It is very very good and part of where that good comes from is the main character, Sage, is a scrappy underdog fighting even when he knows he’s going to get beat for it. The problem with it, is that at the end of the first book, you feel like Sage has really grown up and evolved. Then, at the start of The Runaway King, you realize that he hasn’t grown up at all and that same scrappy attitude of fighting even when you know you’re going to get beat goes from admirable to obnoxious now that he sits on a pile of everything at his fingertips. The book seems to want to make me hate the character by having him push away all and any ancillary characters that show any sympathy or goodness to him.
I may be acting too harshly due to my having such a high affinity for the first novel, but I just had such a hard time with The Runaway King, and the worst part is that I acknowledge it is still a well-written book. Sure, it’s all action and no purple prose but that’s a really good thing in middle-grade fiction. There’s always something happening, and there’s enough hooks at the end of chapters to make you want to look at what is happening on the next page, but the character growth just isn’t there for me.
I will still likely read the third novel out of the proddings of my friends, but if it were purely up to me, I doubt I would have gotten past the first book. But if this book is for you, than I am glad for you! It is unfortunately not for me.