Review:
When Khemri was only a year old, he was taken from his parents in order to be turned into a Prince Candidate, a being faster, stronger, and smarter than ordinary humans. He spent the next few years of his life getting his body enhanced and improved, and the next few years after that learning how special he was. On his seventeenth birthday, he officially became a Prince, was assigned his Master of Assassins, and was nearly killed by another Prince.
That's when he realized that, in a universe populated by millions of other Princes, 1) he wasn't really all that special and 2) he was in constant danger of being assassinated. Granted, being assassinated isn't necessarily the end when you're a Prince. As long as a Prince is connected to the Imperial Mind when they die, there's a good chance they'll come back to life (in an unharmed and slightly different body).
All Khemri wants is a fancy spaceship and some free time to enjoy himself and all the benefits of being a Prince. Instead, he finds himself caught up in a larger scheme that forces him to constantly work hard and deal with actual danger.
As I read this, I found myself thinking of several other science fiction works: Jupiter Ascending (the feeling of being bombarded with boatloads of disorienting sci-fi stuff), Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books (their energy, rather than the main character's smarts), and Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy.
Early Khemri might have been more annoying if the future Khemri who was narrating hadn't been so very aware how naive and arrogant his earlier self was. I enjoyed the narration, and, man, early Khemri sucked. He desperately wanted to be a useless waste of space who did nothing but roll around in luxuries and make use of mind-controlled concubines. I kept expecting Haddad, his very capable Master of Assassins, to "accidentally" allow him to die, but I guess the guy was too much of a professional for that.
The first half of the book, before Khemri met Raine and he instantly fell in love, was the best. Yes, Khemri irked me, but I enjoyed being thrown into this world to learn about it pretty much at the same time Khemri found out most of the things he'd been taught were a lie, and his time in the mini "training" worlds could have been short stories in themselves.
Then Raine and Khemri met, and Khemri was entranced by her beautiful blue eyes. Although Khemri did have some awkward moments, I felt like it should have taken much longer for him to figure out how to properly interact with someone he was interested in who wasn't being mind-controlled. Also, considering what he'd been like up to that point, instalove in general was tough to believe. There was a moment near the end, when Khemri mentioned having to learn that love was something that needs to be worked at rather than an automatic state, when it occurred to me that things could have happened the way they did, but with Khemri and Raine falling out of love. I wonder if the shift in Khemri's thinking would have survived that?
All in all, this was better than I initially expected it to be, but I wish it hadn't relied so heavily on instalove for its exploration of what it means to be human and Khemri's realization that regular Imperial citizens weren't just playthings and tools for Princes.
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