As a fan of the Broken Empire series I started Prince of Fools with some mild apprehension. I love the way Mark Lawrence writes, but other people, who already read the book, often used the word ‘different’ to describe it and I didn’t like different. I wanted the same, whatever this particular blend was I previously liked so much.

I opened the book and got different. It was a great story, that I started to enjoy from the first moment and with a definite ‘Mark Lawrence-ness’ quietly rumbling deep down at its core, but it left me wondering if the magic will somehow once again reach out of the pages and stun me into falling head over crazy, as before.

And soon enough the book twisted and turned, it changed, considered, conspired until it accomplished its aim and I was utterly captured, the prose overwriting my concepts on beautiful, heart stolen away giggle by giggle, line by line, opened with a secret key, cradling me until the dark caressed my daylights into nights.

At the same time Prince Jalan Kendeth, third son of the Red Queen‘s third son, became just as trapped in the legendary Snorri ver Snagason‘s eloquent tales, only to find them turning into cold reality around him that would melt him, freeze him, hammer him into a destiny written by a blood-soaked game played behind hidden veils, drawing their lives toward a single point and time upon which a dream may wake from blood and sacrifice.

I found this book a lot more colourful than the first three, every location of the journey painted with attentive, precise strokes of a thousand shades, characters, interactions, even movements felt more vivid, described in a way that leaks the words into pictures, fiction swallowing your reality, opening a door you willingly enter, forgetting your body far behind.

Closing it left me with one of those peculiar moods that you might experience after listening to a captivating melody or watching a sunset. Not something you want to discuss straight away, but preferring to stay quiet, smiling, enjoying and preserving the feelings it created inside.

And now, that I‘m ready to speak, my only fear is that I might not find the right words to tell just how much I loved it.

Mitriel