The first time I heard of The False Prince was when Susan Dee recommended it to me on Good Reads. Then, as Bill and I were looking at different Mock Newbery lists, The False Prince showed up on Anderson's Bookshop's list and even got 1 vote on Heavy Medal's December voting. I finally just went ahead and ordered it for myself, and I'm so glad I did!From the very beginning of the story right through to the last page, Jennifer Nielsen takes the reader on an incredible, action-packed journey, with many, many plot twists along the way. I'm dying to share this with my students but truly can't decide if it would be better to read it aloud to reach the largest possible audience, or let it start to float through the room to those who are interested. But it most definitely should be read!!
Without giving too much of the plot away, this is a story about an ambitious man, Conner, who handpicks four orphan boys in the hopes he can transform them into royalty so they will be able to impersonate the son of the king. This son was thought to have died in an attack by pirates but his body was never found. Conner thinks he will become the power behind the throne if one of his orphan boys can "sell" people that he is in fact the long-lost prince.
The False Prince is not a book I would normally have chosen on my own, so I'm very grateful for my friends' recommendations. The writing is amazing, the plot is intricately intertwined, and there is most definitely several different themes within the story. I'm delighted that there are yet two more books to follow this one, as it is part of a trilogy (I actually just pre-ordered the second one in the middle of writing this post!).
